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A FIGHTING FRIGATE 



OTHEE ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES 



BY 

HENRY CABOT LODGE 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1902 



/"V- 



THF LIBRAITY Of 

CONGRESS, 
Two Comt>. R 

OCT. ?c tec? 

Ot-*S9 Ol yXo No. 
COPY B 



En3 



Copyright, 1903 
By Charles Scribner's Sons 

Published October, 1902 



ONIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSOJf 
AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. 



Z-2,1 



1^ 

WINTHROP MURRAY CRANE 

Governor of Massachusetts 

You will find in this volume three addresses upon the lives 
and public services of three Governors of the State of Mas- 
sachusetts who were your friends as well as mine. I have 
reprinted these addresses here because the careers of these 
Massachusetts Governors seem to me to have been an honor 
to their State and country. To you, their successor, wholly 
worthy to stand with them among the most eminent of the long 
and distinguished line of the Chief Magistrates of Massachu- 
setts, I dedicate this book. I ask you to accept it as a mark 
of my personal regard and of my admiration for your wisdom, 
your character, and your ability, as well as for the high and 
disinterested principles of conduct by which you have been 
guided in your most efficient and successful public service. 



TABLE OF C0:N^TENTS 

Page 

A Fighting Frigate 1 

John Marshall 25 

Oliver Ellsworth . 65 

Daniel Webster — His Oratory and his Influence . 107 
Three Governors of Massachusetts — 

Frederic T. Greenhalge 135 

George D. Robinson 159 

Roger Wolcott 182 

The Treaty-Making Powers of the Senate .... 219 

Some Impressions of Russia 257 

Rochambeau 291 

Appendix — 

Letter from Hon. George F. Hoar 305 



A FIGHTING FRIGATE* 

The United States frigate Constitution has come 
back to Boston and to Massachusetts. She floats 
again upon the waters into which she rushed as she 
left the builder's ways a hundred years ago. She 
returns to us stripped of her masts and spars, of her 
sails and guns, of all that once made her a thing of 
life. She is little more now than a hulk, roofed over 
and weather-beaten, helpless and motionless on the 
sea where once she rode triumphant. Curious in- 
quirers have been at pains to tell us that of the ship 
launched in 1797 scarcely anything remains; that in 
her long career she has been made over from truck to 
keel. So be it. Whether the statement is true or 
false matters not. It is not a given mass of wood 
and iron which touches our hearts and stirs our pride. 
It is the old ship herself, because she is the visible 
symbol of a great past, charged with noble memories, 
and representing sentiments, aspirations, and beliefs 
far more lasting than 

" Brass eternal, slave to mortal rage." 

1 Address delivered in the Old South Church, Boston, October 21, 
1897, on the occasion of the return of the frigate Constitution to 
the Charlestown Navy Yard. 

1 



A A FIGHTING FRIGATE 

That which concerns us here is what this old man- 
of-war means to us, not what she is. There is " much 
music, excellent voice " in this historic ship, and, more 
fortunate than Hamlet's friends, we know the touch 
of it and can make it speak. 

Every one is familiar with Turner's famous picture 
of "The Fighting Temeraire Towed to her Last 
Berth." It is a masterpiece of England's greatest 
painter. The splendor of the execution arrests the 
eye at once. The crowded river, the disturbed water, 
the smoky mist, the marvellous effects of clouds and 
color, of light and shade, all fill the gazer with won- 
der and delight. But there is much more than this. 
As we look at the old brown hulk dragged slowly up 
the murky stream, we see that the canvas before us 
is not only a picture, but a poem full of pathos and 
of memories. The old ship's course is run. She will 
never face the seas nor front the foe again. The end 
of a great career, always pathetic to the finite mind, 
is here very present to us. Yet even this is not all 
which genius has put upon the canvas. Turner was 
painting more than water, sky, and ship. He has 
touched the scene with the enchanter's wand, and we 
behold as in a magic mirror the story of England's 
navy. The long roll of her sea fights stretches out 
before us. All the great figures are there, from 
Grenville sinking on the Revenge ringed round by 
foes, and Blake burning the Spanish ships at Cadiz 



A FIGHTING FRIGATE 6 

and sweeping through the Mediterranean, to Nelson 
dying victorious at Trafalgar. Above all, the " Fight- 
ing Temeraire " speaks to us of that supreme period 
of England's naval history when she had crushed 
France and Spain, and ruled the ocean unopposed, 
the great sea power of the world. Against that 
mighty power, in the full flush of victory and 
dominion, we took up arms, and England suddenly 
discovered that, ship for ship and man for man, she 
had more than met her match. 

It was by no fault of their own that the United 
States found themselves pitted in a terribly unequal 
struggle against this great antagonist. From the 
renewal of the Napoleonic wars, after the rupture of 
the Peace of Amiens, there was no insult, no humili- 
ation, no outrage which the two great combatants, 
England and France, failed to inflict on the United 
States. The administrations of Jefferson and Madison 
attempted to meet these attacks with diplomacy, 
which was worthless, because not backed by either 
courage or force, and with commercial restrictions 
which injured us more than those against whom they 
were aimed. On the other hand, the Federalist oppo- 
sition, sympathizing with England in her struggle 
against Napoleon, taunted the administration with 
the humiliations to which we were forced to submit, 
and yet made a factious resistance to every effort at 
retaliation. Gradually the situation grew too intol- 



4 A FIGHTING FRIGATE 

erable to be borne. If our flag was to be flouted, our 
seamen impressed, our ships seized, our diplomatists 
insulted, then our independence for which we had 
fought was a delusion, and we were abject slaves of 
a worse tyranny than any ever dreamed of in colonial 
days. This the spirit of the American people could 
not endure, and a new party rose up, led by Clay, 
Calhoun, and the younger men of the South and West, 
who determined that we should at least vindicate our 
right to exist as a nation, and that it was better to go 
down fighting, if sink we must, than to submit to 
degradation and ruin without a murmur. This new 
party meant to fight. That they rushed forward 
blindly, that they counted no cost, that they were 
guilty of loud boasting without making any prepara- 
tion, that they allowed words to pass for deeds, when 
what we needed were soldiers, sailors, and ships, and 
not language, is all sadly true. And yet none the 
less were they fundamentally right. At that period, if 
we were to have peace or honor or national existence, 
we were compelled to fight. The new war party did 
not care with whom we fought. They were ready 
to fight both France and England, or either of them. 
There was not much to choose so far as their ill- 
treatment of us was concerned, and it was indeed 
merely owing to the cynical duplicity and mendacity 
of Napoleon that we finally went to war with England 
instead of with France. Into that conflict the new 



A FIGHTING FRIGATE 5 

party dragged the reluctant President, while the 
Federalists, with bitter if unconscious satire, called 
it "Mr. Madison's war." 

Thus war began. "We were utterly unprepared on 
land. At the time of the Revolution a large part of 
the people lived on the frontier, and were pioneers, 
backwoodsmen, and Indian fighters. Even in the 
older settlements, except in a few seaport towns, the 
men from their boyhood were accustomed to shoot 
and ride. Their habits of life were such that they 
were easily made into soldiers, for they were rifle- 
men and horsemen naturally, and lacked nothing 
but drill and discipline. In 1812 the growth of the 
country had changed the situation. "We had no or- 
ganized militia, as we have to-day, and soldiers had 
to be taken largely from among men who had never 
fired a gun or mounted a horse. We could not 
make an army out of this material as quickly as 
we did in the Revolution. Yet the bravery and 
fighting capacity of the race are shown by the fact 
that in two years we had soldiers able to fight with 
the best at Lundy's Lane and Chippewa, while the 
Spaniards, after five years of service under "Welling- 
ton, raced away at Toulouse as if they had never 
seen an enemy. None the less, the two years spent 
in making soldiers after hostilities had begun were 
marked by disasters which suitable preparation for 
war would have avoided. 



6 A FIGHTING FRIGATE 

At sea the case was very different. The last 
Federalist Administration had begun our naval policy, 
and built ships of the finest types. The policy was 
abandoned by Jefferson, but the ships remained, and, 
although they were few, they were of the best. We 
were a seafaring people, and the American sailor be- 
came a man-of-war's-man at once. At sea, therefore, 
although in a very limited way, we were prepared, 
and the result was at once apparent. The career 
of the Constitution illustrates that of the American 
navy throughout the war, although she was not only 
uniformly victorious, but more fortunate than many 
of her sister ships in escaping capture by a superior ^ 
force. To tell the splendid story of the Constitu- 
tion in the detail it deserves would take hours, and 
to-day we have only minutes to give. 

I can only touch here very briefly on the events which 
have made the old ship so famous. Commanded by 
Capt. Isaac Hull, she left the Chesapeake on the 12th 
of July, 1812. On the 17th she almost ran into a 
British squadron, consisting of a ship of the line of 
sixty-four guns and four frigates. They gave chase. 
For three days, through perilous calms, when he 
towed and warped his ship along, through light and 
baffling breezes, through squalls and darkness, Hull 
worked his way until the last enemy dropped be- 
low the horizon. It was a fine exhibition of cool 
courage and skilful seamanship. He outmanoeuvred 



A FIGHTING FRIGATE 7 

and outsailed his foe, and escaped from an over- 
whelming force flying the flag of the mistress of the 
seas. July 26 the Constitution reached Boston, and 
on August 2 set sail again, and stood to the eastward. 
Thence she went to the Bay of Fundy and ran along 
the coast of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland to Cape 
Race. On the 19th she sighted the Guerriere, one 
of the ships which had pursued her, and bore down 
at once. There was an hour of long-range firing, 
by which little damage was done, and then the 
Constitution closed, and they exchanged broadsides 
within pistol shot. The sea was very rough, but the 
American aim was deadly. The Constitution was 
but little damaged, while the Guerriere' s mizzenmast 
went by the board. Then Hull luffed under his enemy's 
bows and raked her, then wore and raked again. So 
near were the two ships now that they became en- 
tangled. Boarders were called away on the Guerriere, 
but the British recoiled from the mass of seamen on 
the American ship. The sea indeed was so high that 
boarding was impossible, although the Americans tried 
it, and the musketry fire at these close quarters was 
very severe. Then it was that the Americans suffered 
the loss of the day, but that of the British was much 
heavier. Finally the sea forced the ships apart, after 
this brief hand-to-hand conflict, and as they separated 
the foremast and mainmast of the Guerriere went by 
the board, so that she rolled a helpless hulk upon the 



8 A FIGHTING FRIGATE 

waves. Hull drew off, repaired damages and bore 
down again, when the Guerriere struck her flag. 
The next day Hull took off all her crew, and the 
Guerriere, shot to pieces and a mere wreck, was set 
on fire and blown up. We had a better ship, more 
men, and threw a greater weight of metal. But we 
also fought our ship better and were better gunners, 
for while the Constitution lost fourteen killed and 
wounded, the Guerriere lost seventy-nine, and was 
herself utterly destroyed. 

Hull returned in triumph to Boston, and the news 
of his victory filled the country with pride, and Eng- 
land with alarm. The London " Times " thought it 
a serious blow to England's naval supremacy. " It 
is not merely that an English frigate has been 
taken," said the " Times," " but that it has been taken 
by a new enemy." At that period England naturally 
enough considered herself invincible. Her officers and 
seamen never stopped to consider odds, but closed 
with an antagonist and then romped on board her, 
confident that one Englishman was equal to at least 
five Frenchmen or Spaniards. The results hitherto 
had justified their confidence, but now sprang up a 
people who had faster ships, sailed better, and shot 
straighter than they, and who were also quite as ready 
as they to come to close quarters by boarding. One 
frigate was nothing, but the facts flashed out in this 
first fight of the Constitution were impressive. 



A FIGHTING FRIGATE 9 

Hull resigned the command of the Constitution, 
and was succeeded by Captain Bainbridge, who sailed 
on October 26. In December the Constitution was 
off the coast of Brazil, and just as the year was 
closing she fell in with the Java, carrying out Lieu- 
tenant-General Hislop, the new Governor of Bombay. 
The Java was one of the crack frigates of the British 
navy. She was faster than the Constitution, and 
carried only 50 less men, and 78 pounds less weight 
of metal. The ships were thus pretty evenly 
matched, and the Constitution suffered most from 
the first broadside exchanged at long range. After 
that, however, the British fire was steadily inferior, 
while that of the Americans became more and more 
deadly. Captain Lambert, who was killed in the 
action, handled his ship with skill and fought her 
with the utmost gallantry. But, despite the Java's 
advantage in speed, Bainbridge's admirable seaman- 
ship overcame it, and he kept clear of being raked by 
wearing in the smoke, although his wheel had been 
shot away and his steering was hampered. The 
Java getting more and more crippled and suffering 
severely from the fire from the American tops. Cap- 
tain Lambert ordered her to be laid aboard the 
enemy. She came down with her men ready for 
the spring, but before she reached her antagonist 
her maintopmast and her foremast had been shot 
away. Her bowsprit caught in the Constitution's 



10 A FIGHTING FRIGATE 

mizzen rigging, and the Americans raked her once 
more. Again the ships swung side by side, but the 
American fire tore the Java to pieces, and finally 
silenced her guns. The Constitution bore up, spent 
an hour in repairing damages, and then stood again 
toward the Java, only to have her strike her colors. 
Two days later Bainbridge took the crew out and 
destroyed his prize, for she was too much injured to 
be carried to the United States. It had been a hard- 
fought action between two nearly equal antagonists, 
and the British lost their ship and 150 men in 
killed and wounded, while the Americans' loss was 
48. Each captain fought his ship well, but it was 
the precision and rapidity of the American fire 
which won the day and inflicted such disproportion- 
ate loss on the enemy. 

The Constitution continued in active service, doing 
good work and escaping capture by superior force, 
but it was not until 1815, after peace had actually 
been signed, that she won her last victory. Com- 
manded by Capt. Charles Stewart, she slipped out 
of Boston Harbor on December 17, 1814, and on 
February 20, off Madeira, fell in with the frigate- 
built corvette Cyane and the sloop Levant. They 
were ready enough to fight, and, the Constitution 
coming up with them soon after six o'clock, the 
action began at close quarters with both the enemy's 
vessels on the port side of the frigate. The broad- 



A FIGHTING FRIGATE 11 

sides were heavy and continuous and the firing from 
the tops steady. This lasted a quarter of an hour. 
It was then moonlight, and a heavy cloud of smoke 
hid the British vessels. Stewart therefore stopped 
firing, and when the smoke lifted he saw the Levant 
dead to leeward and the Cyane luffing up for his port 
quarter. He braced his topsails back, backed rapidly 
astern, forcing the Cyane to fill to avoid being raked, 
and then poured in his broadsides. The Cyane's fire 
slackened and died away. The Levant coming to 
the rescue, Stewart drove her off with two broadsides 
and fell again upon the Cyane, which struck just 
before seven o'clock, after an action lasting forty 
minutes. Putting a prize crew on the Cyane, Stewart 
bore down after the Levant, which first fought, then 
tried unsuccessfully to escape, and finally struck. 
Stewart sailed with his prizes to the Cape de Verde 
Islands, and while there at anchor sighted three 
heavy British frigates making for the harbor. He at 
once, with a rapidity which showed the remarkable 
skill and discipline of his crew, got all three vessels 
under way and put to sea. The Cyane escaped and 
was brought safely to the United States. The Con- 
stitution also outsailed her pursuers, but the Levant 
took refuge in Porto Pray a, and as England did not 
pay the slightest attention to the neutral rights of a 
weak power, was there recaptured. This action was 
one of the most brilliant bits of seamanship and 



12 A FIGHTING FRIGATE 

manoeuvring in the whole war, for Stewart not 
only defeated two antagonists, but captured them 
both. The British had 130 less men and 59 pounds 
greater weight of metal than the Constitution, yet 
they lost fifty-seven men and both ships. It was a 
fit close to the career of the Constitution, which had 
never lost a fight or been caught by a superior force. 
I have touched only on the exploits of the Con- 
stitution in the War of 1812, and have not recounted 
at all the work she did in checking the attacks of 
the French at the close of the previous century or 
the large part she took in the war with the Barbary 
States, when under Preble she bombarded Tripoli and 
imposed submission on that nest of pirates. But 
creditable as were those earlier performances, it was 
only in the War of 1812 that the career of the 
Constitution takes on a wide importance and a deep 
significance. She may stand for us as the exemplar 
of the American navy at that period, and it was the 
work of the navy which then vindicated our national 
existence and relieved us forever from the state of 
oppression and outrage to which we had been subjected. 
In saying this I do not overlook the good fighting 
that our soldiers finally did on the Canadian border. 
Still less do I forget New Orleans. Jackson, draw- 
ing on a population of frontiersmen and Indian 
fighters of the same class as those who in the 
Revolution had crushed Burgoyne and won King's 



A FIGHTING FRIGATE 13 

Mountain, found material ready to his hand out 
of which an army could be quickly developed. 
With six thousand American riflemen he defeated 
with heavy loss more than ten thousand of Welling- 
ton's Peninsula veterans, who had swept before 
them the soldiers of Napoleon, commanded by one 
of the ablest of his marshals. But New Orleans 
was fought after the peace had been signed. It did 
not affect the outcome of the war, and English his- 
tories would seem to indicate that the news of 
Jackson's victory was never received, nor the facts 
in regard to it ever known, in England. The 
fighting which brought us out of the war with an 
unsatisfactory treaty, but with every substantial 
object fully attained, was that of the lakes and the 
ocean. Perry's victory on Lake Erie, and Mac- 
Donough's less famous but equally important and 
more brilliant victory at Plattsburg, won against odds 
with which Perry did not have to contend, rendered 
all the military successes of the British of no avail. 
This was acknowledged by Wellington, who, when he 
was asked to take command in America, said that if 
he went out it would only be to make peace, for he 
did not see that England had achieved any success 
which could compel from the Americans the slightest 
concession of territory or principle. 

On the ocean our victories in material results were 
trifling, but their effect was enormous. It was not 



14 A FIGHTING FRIGATE 

that we had taken a few frigates, preyed successfully 
on British commerce, and raised insurance rates in 
London, but that we had demonstrated to the world 
that we were formidable fighters, capable of contest- 
ing the dominion of the seas with any power, and if 
pushed to the wall, able to wreck the trade and com- 
merce of our antagonist. We went into the contest 
with some dozen men-of-war, while England had a 
thousand. The few sloops and frigates which Eng- 
land lost to us were in themselves hardly to be 
noticed in the immense mass of her naval force. 
But the moral and political effect was incalculable. 
A single brief statement shows what the American 
victories meant. In twenty years England had 
fought over two hundred single ship actions, with 
pretty much every people of Europe, and had lost 
only five of them. In six months she fought five 
single ship actions with us and lost every one. Dur- 
ing the war, despite the fact that our ships, as was 
inevitable, were sooner or later taken or blockaded 
by vastly superior force, there were thirteen single 
ship actions, including that of the Constitution with 
the Cyane and Levant, and England won two and 
lost eleven. To the great sea power of the world 
these facts were grave and alarming. At the same 
time, also, our cruisers and privateers ranged the 
English Channel and swarmed along the highways of 
ocean traffic, harrying and capturing British mer- 



A FIGHTING FRIGATE 15 

chantmen and forcing up insurance to a height un- 
heard of before. A few pointless raids and barren 
victories in America were all Great Britain could set 
against these painful losses of ships and money. In 
a word, her naval prestige was damaged, and her 
commerce injured by a new sea power, rapidly de- 
veloping under the stress of war. There was no way 
to get compensation for such vital wounds as these 
from a nation three thousand miles away. Hence 
the treaty of Ghent. Hence the vindication of the 
rights of the United States as a nation. 

That this is a correct statement of the effect of the 
fighting done by the Constitution and her sister ships 
is proved not only by our own opinion, but by that of 
England and Europe as well. Sir Howard Douglas, 
in his book on gunnery, which for fifty years was the 
text-book of the English Navy, takes nearly every 
example of single ship actions from our War of 1812. 
There we may learn that it was the Americans who 
first taught the naval world to fire on the falling 
wave, which at that day was little less than a revolu- 
tion in practical gunnery. If we turn to the greatest 
of the French naval authorities, Admiral Jurien de la 
Graviere, an entirely disinterested witness, we shall 
find that almost the only single ship actions which 
he mentions are ours. He gave as much attention 
to them as to the great fleet actions of the preceding 
twenty years, and he was writing a purely scientific 



16 A FIGHTING FRIGATE 

book on naval warfare for the French. These high 
authorities, one French and one English, prove that 
in single ship actions, which alone we were able to 
undertake, we at once went to the front rank, sur- 
passed even England, and gave lessons in seamanship 
and gunnery to the great sea power of the world. 

The moral effect of our victories and of our sea 
fighting is shown even more strikingly by contempo- 
rary opinion. In 1827 James, the English naval 
historian, wrote as follows to George Canning : " The 
menacing tone of the American President's message 
is now the prevailing topic of conversation, more 
especially among the mercantile men, in whose com- 
pany I daily travel to and from town. One says, 
' We had better cede a point or two than go to war 
with the United States.' * Yes,' says another, ' for 
we shall get nothing but hard knocks there.' ^ True,' 
adds a third ; ' and what is worse than all, our sea- 
men are more than half afraid to meet the Americans 
at sea.' Unfortunately this depression of feeling, 
this cowed spirit, prevails very generally over the 
community ; even among persons well informed on 
other subjects, and who, were a British seaman to 
be named with a Frenchman or a Spaniard, would 
scoff at the comparison." About the same time 
Stratford Canning came out as Minister to the 
United States. He was a man of ability and of 
high and imperious temper, very well known after- 



A FIGHTING FRIGATE 17 

ward as Lord Stratford de Redclyffe, the "■ Great 
Eltchi " of the Eastern question, and the chief author 
of the Crimean War. He was sent here through the 
influence of his cousin, George Canning, then a mem- 
ber of the Ministry, — the same George Canning who, 
in the first decade of the century, had sneered at and 
trampled on the United States, and called our navy 
" a few fir frigates, with bits of bunting at the top." 
Since that jeer had been flung at us these " fir 
frigates" had whipped British frigates in every 
action fought by them but one, and when the im- 
perious and somewhat domineering Stratford Can- 
ning came to Washington he wrote as follows of 
his purpose : " The maintenance of peace was to 
be my principal care, and with this view it was de- 
sirable that I should be rather observant than active, 
slow to take offence, and in the management of cur- 
rent affairs more tolerant of adverse pretensions than 
ready to push my own claims to an extreme." Mr. 
Poole, Stratford Canning's biographer, adds : " Con- 
ciliation was then the purpose of the British Govern- 
ment, — England had learned by more than one 
experience that the temper of the states was not to be 
rashly trifled with." What a change of tone is here 
from that of the early years of the century, when the 
words and actions alike of foreign Powers toward 
the United States are such that we cannot recall 
them even now without a hot blush of shame and 

2 



18 A FIGHTING FRIGATE 

mortification ! What a good lesson had been taught, 
and how much had really been done for peace by the 
guns of that old ship now fallen silent forever ! 

Another little incident in this same direction is also 
very suggestive. At almost his first interview with 
Stratford Canning, John Quincy Adams, then Secre- 
tary of State, said, " It took us last time several years 
to go to war with England ; it would only take sev- 
eral weeks now ; " and Mr. Canning accepted the 
intimation in good part. Mr. Adams has been dead 
for more than fifty years, and he may safely, therefore, 
be called a statesman, and a great one, too, whose opin- 
ions it is well to heed. A little reflection, moreover, 
will show that he was entirely right in his attitude 
toward England, and in reality the best friend and 
maintainer of peace. Jefferson and Madison were 
hesitating and timid. They swallowed insult in the 
interests of peace and landed us in war. Mr. Adams 
took a high, firm tone with England and maintained 
peace inviolate. Jefferson and Madison abandoned 
ship building, prepared no defences, and drifted, 
feebly gesticulating, into a conflict with the greatest 
sea power of the world. John Quincy Adams and 
Andrew Jackson after him took a strong and self- 
respecting tone with all the world and kept an un- 
broken peace. England and Europe received valuable 
instruction from the war of which this battered old 
ship is the sign and symbol, but we Americans were 



A FIGHTING FRIGATE 19 

taught a great deal more. We had learned that 
weak defencelessness meant war, and strong, armed 
readiness meant peace, honor, and quiet. When 
John Quincy Adams spoke to Mr. Canning he knew 
that he was backed by a strong navy, for in 1826, 
with a population of ten millions, we had a larger 
navy than we have to-day,^ with a population of 
seventy millions. It is well to note that the lesson 
of wise preparation, taught by the War of 1812, and 
always worth remembering, is even more important 
now than then, for to-day great wars are fought in a 
few months, while it takes years to build modern 
ships and cast rifled guns. 

Out of the War of 1812 came these teachings, and 
out of these teachings, taken to heart, as they were, 
by the men of that day, came peace, the only peace 
worth having. One hears it often said by persons 
who are prone to mistake for thought the repetition 
of aged aphorisms, that some people intend to have 
peace even if they fight for it. They imagine that 
they are giving utterance to a biting and conclusive 
sarcasm, when in reality they are stating a profound 
and simple truth. All the peace the world has ever 
had has been obtained by fighting, and all the peace 
that any nation, which is neither subject nor trivial, 

^ The American navy has not only done some fighting quite in 
the fashion of 1812, but has been much increased since these words 
were spoken in 1897. 



20 A FIGHTING FRIGATE 

can ever have, is by readiness to fight if attacked. 
In our cities and towns we maintain a large army 
of soldiers. We call them policemen, but they are 
drilled and organized, and are in all essentials a 
military body. For what purpose are they main- 
tained ? To make war on any one ? On the contrary, 
we have police in order to keep the public peace. In 
the same way must the peace of nations be kept. 
Weakness, fear, and defencelessness mean war and 
dishonor. Readiness, preparation, and courage mean 
honor and peace. Where we were unprepared 
in 1812 we suffered ; where we were prepared we 
prospered and vindicated our national existence. 
That is the true line of national policy for which 
the Constitution stands to-day just as much as 
when she overcame the English frigates. Her builder, 
building better than he knew, both in timber and in 
words, called her with a fine eloquence " a powerful 
agent of national justice." So she was, and she was 
also a minister and guardian of peace, — not the 
peace at which a spirited people revolts, but the 
peace of which Lowell sings : 

" Come peace ! Not like a mourner bowed, 
For honor lost an' dear ones wasted, 
But proud, to meet a people proud, 
With eyes that tell o' triumph tasted." 

But there is still something more in this ship 
Constitution than vivid instruction as to the truest 



A FIGHTING FRIGATE 21 

national policy. She is the yet living monument, 
not alone of her own victories, but of the men 
behind the guns who won them. She speaks to us 
of patriotism and courage, of the devotion to an idea 
and to a sentiment for which men laid down their 
lives. The distinguished President of a great univer- 
sity has recently warned his students against the 
tendency " to magnify the savage virtues." It is well 
recognized that certain virtues can be carried to a 
point where they cease to be such, but it is not quite 
clear how a genuine virtue of any kind can be too 
much magnified. The virtues termed " savage " I take 
to be the early and primary ones of courage, indiffer- 
ence to danger, and loyalty to the tribes or clans 
which, in the processes of time, became nations and 
countries. These primary or " savage " virtues made 
states and nations possible, and in their very nature 
are the foundations out of which other virtues have 
arisen. If they decay, the whole fabric they sup- 
port will totter and fall. 

The gentler virtues, as well as the refinements and 
graces of civilization, rest upon these simpler quali- 
ties, and the highest achievements of the race in the 
arts of peace have come from the strong, bold nations 
of the earth. Art, literature, philosophy, invention, 
in Greece and Rome, in Venice and Holland, all 
reached their zenith when those countries were at the 
height of their military and political power, and sank 



22 A FIGHTING FRIGATE 

as that power decayed. The discoveries, the educa- 
tion, the freedom, the material development, the vast 
growth of all which is required to raise and to better 
the conditions of mankind, have been most conspicu- 
ous and have made the largest progress among those 
nations which were strongest, most daring, and readi- 
est to defend their rights. Material success with all 
that it implies is a great achievement, but it is as 
nothing to the courage and faith which make men 
ready to sacrifice all, even their lives, for an ideal or 
for a sentiment. The men who fell upon the decks 
of the Constitution, or who died at Gettysburg and 
Shiloh, represent the highest and noblest spirit of 
which a race is capable. Without that spirit of 
patriotism, courage, and self-sacrifice no nation can 
long exist, and the greatest material success in the 
hands of the cringing and timid will quickly turn to 
dust and ashes. 

The Constitution as she lies in our harbor to-day is 
an embodiment and memorial of that lofty patriotism. 
Therefore she should be j^reserved. Boston has for 
her a peculiar attachment. Here she was built. 
Here she was launched. From yonder harbor she 
went forth to her first and to her last combat, and 
here she returned scarred with shot, but crowned 
with her first great victory. We have yet another 
claim upon her, deeper and stronger still. When she 
was threatened with destruction fifteen years after 



A FIGHTING FEIGATE 23 

the war. she was saved by the lyric verse of a Boston 
poet, by the ''powerful rhyme" which outlasts the 
gilded monuments of princes. Built, launched, and 
saved here in Boston, is it any wonder that we have 
a peculiar attachment to the old frigate and should 
feel that this ought to be her home and resting- 
place ? 

And yet we know well that slie is not our ship. 
She did not win her victories for Massachusetts, but 
for the United States. She was the nation's ship and 
fous^ht the nation's battles beneath the nation's flas^. 
It is the duty, then, of this nation to care for and pre- 
serve her. I say duty, because the nation which does 
not cherish and guard all that stands for the great deeds 
of the past will have a present and a future barren of 
aught that posterity will care to recall. "With a wise 
liberality the United States has given three quarters 
of a million to restore and rcht the Hartford, the 
ship in which Farragut went on to victory, emblem 
of the sea power which rent the Confederacy in 
twain, and caught the seaports of the Rebellion m an 
iron grip. Let the United States give but a third of 
that sum to restore the Constitution, the last and 
most famous of the fighting ships which won us 
place and respect among the nations of the earth. 

Turn her into a training vessel, if 3'ou will, and let 
American boys learn from her lessons of patriotism 
as well as seamanship, but at all events let her be 



24 A FIGHTING FRIGATE 

preserved. She represents gallant deeds and goodly 
victories. She stands for the spirit of patriotism, 
which uplifts nations and without which no people 
can be great. So I say all honor to the brave old 
ship. You may strip her of sails and rigging, cut 
away her masts and take out her guns, but you never 
can tear from her the memories which she bears. 
Let her have, then, now and always the love and 
honor and care which are hers by right. But what- 
ever befalls, let us at least not suffer her to perish by 
neglect and fade away from sight like " the dull 
weed that rots itself in ease at Lethe's Wharf." If 
we cannot keep her in honor, then let it be said now, 
even as was said nearly seventy years ago: , 

"Nail to her mast het holy flag, 
Set every threadbare sail. 
And give her to the God of storms, 
The lightning and the gale." 



JOHN MARSHALL 1 

One hundred years ago to-day John Marshall was 
duly sworn in and took his place upon the bench of 
the Supreme Court as Chief Justice of the United 
States. There seems to have been no ceremony, no 
parade, no pomp of any kind about the doing of it. 
The record of the Supreme Court tells us in dry, 
official words that on February 4, 1801, the great 
Virginian lawyer assumed the highest judicial office 
in the country. That is all. The fact itself dropped 
so quickly into the babbling current of daily events 
that the parting of the waters was quite unheard. 
Yet the circles which this noiseless deed then made 
in the stream of time have gone on widening with 
growing force until to-day all over this broad land, 
everywhere among this mighty nation of nearly 
eighty millions, the members of a great profession, 
the teachers and students of universities, the Presi- 
dent, the Congress, and the courts, have gathered to 
commemorate fittingly the official action so quietly 
performed a century ago. Here, then, it is very 
plain was a great man, one worthy of much thought 

1 An address delivered before the Bar Associations of Illinois and 
Chicago at the auditorium in Chicago, February 4, 1901. 



26 JOHN MARSHALL 

and consideration. Is there, indeed, any subject 
better worth thought and consideration than a real 
man, so great that he not only affected his own time 
profoundly, but has projected his influence through 
the century, and holds still in a firm grasp the mind 
and the imagination of posterity? I am sure that 
by thoughtful men this question can be answered 
only in the affirmative. 

As I have reflected upon that event, so briefly 
mentioned in the routine of the Supreme Court 
record for the year 1801, there is one thought which 
has prevailed in my mind above all others. When 
Marshall took the oath as Chief Justice he was 
Secretary of State, and for a month he continued to 
hold both offices, and to wield very vigorously the 
powers of the State Department. Perhaps this may 
not strike other minds as of much importance. To 
me it seems full of significance. The fact that hold- 
ing two such ofiices at the same time is repugnant to 
our present ideas of propriety, is in itself worth a 
moment's consideration, although it does not contain 
the deeper meaning which is to be found in this 
incident. It is quite true that to-day no President 
would think of permitting the Chief Justice to be a 
member of his cabinet for an hour, and no Chief 
Justice would allow himself to occupy such a posi- 
tion for an instant. Should such a thing occur, the 
storm of adverse criticism which would beat upon 



JOHN MARSHALL 27 

both the President and Chief Justice can be readily 
imagined. The spectacle of a Chief Justice acting as 
the chief of a party cabinet and in the spirit of party 
politics would now shock every one. Then it shocked 
nobody. In 1801 we were still very near to England 
in manners and in habits of thought. We had as yet 
no administrative traditions of our own. Pluralists 
were not uncommon in English ministries ; great 
judicial officers had often served as ministers of the 
crown ; to this day the highest judicial officer in 
Great Britain is a member of the cabinet, his place is 
purely political in tenure, and he rises and falls with 
his party. The English practice of having the chief 
law officer a member of the government we have 
wisely retained in our Attorney-General, but with 
equal wisdom we have discarded entirely their custom 
of having judicial officers in high political place. A 
United States judge to-day can hold no other office, 
and when he ascends to the bench the door of po- 
litical preferment closes behind him. All this practice 
is deeply fixed and rooted now, but it was not so in 
1801. 

This is not said with any view of defending Mar- 
shall. John Adams and the Chief Justice, who 
remained in his cabinet helping him to fill with tried 
Federalists every vacant or newly created office, were 
not only high-minded and honorable men, but abso- 
lutely void of offence in this particular. The system 



28 JOHN MARSHALL 

under which they acted is not so good as the one we 
have since developed ; that is all. To accuse them of 
wrongdoing would be as absurd as the educated 
ignorance which, parrot-like, repeats the conventional 
cant of its own circle about the decline in the char- 
acter and standard of our public life at Washington. 
If, for example, we are to believe the Maclay Diary, 
the first Senate of the United States was corrupt and 
decadent to the last degree ; the fruit of the Constitu- 
tion was rotten before it was ripe. But posterity 
knows that the first Senate was upright and honor- 
able, composed of able men doing their best — and 
their best, although very good, was doubtless imper- 
fect — to solve in hard conflict the difficult problems of 
their day. If Maclay was right in picturing the first 
Senate as bad, and the professional fault-finder of the 
moment is also right in his proposition, that all public 
men have declined in character, then we are met 
with the startling contradiction that our government 
still exists. The trouble is that the contemporary 
who can only censure is as untrustworthy as Bache 
in his opinion of Washington, or as Greeley and 
many others were in their estimate of Lincoln. The 
superior person who leads a life of inaction and criti- 
cism judges the present by prejudice, and contrasts it 
with a past that never existed. From the past, of 
which he is ignorant, he eliminates all that is bad, 
and from the present, which he does not understand, 



JOHN MARSHALL 29 

he excludes all that is good. It is not to be won- 
dered at that a dark cloud of pessimism broods over 
his mental landscape, or that he is himseK a singu- 
larly useless person. In the easy blame which such a 
critic, arguing in his usual fashion, could throw upon 
John Marshall for holding political oJSice after he 
became Chief Justice, there has seemed to me an 
interesting lesson, so interesting that it has led me 
into this long digression. 

The real meaning of this occupancy of two offices is 
far different. For a month Marshall was head of the 
cabinet and head of the judiciary. He was at once 
statesman and judge, and although he laid down the 
statesman's place on the 4th of March, 1801, he 
retained the character to the end of his life, and 
never ceased to be a statesman while he built up that 
great reputation which in its breadth and variety 
surpasses, as I believe, that of any judge or jurist in 
the splendid legal annals of the English-speaking 
people. 

Many men, far abler and more fit for the task 
than I, will to-day depict eloquently to the American 
people the work and the genius of Marshall as lawyer 
and judge. Upon that inviting field I shall not 
enter. I shall confine myself to the simpler and 
humbler task of trying to show how great Marshall 
was, and how potent his influence has been as a 
statesman, — a side of his character which, unless my 



30 JOHN MARSHALL 

reading has much misled me, has been hitherto neg- 
lected, if not overlooked, by eyes dazzled with the 
brilliancy of his achievements and fame as a lawyer. 
But to understand what he was we must, as usual, 
start with an inquiry. How had he been trained, 
and what were the qualities which enabled him to play 
in our history these two great parts as jurist and 
statesman ? He was born one of that small body of 
people who composed the landowning, slaveholding 
aristocracy of Virginia at the close of the eighteenth 
century, and which at that time produced, perhaps, a 
larger amount of ability in the fields of war, law, and 
statecraft than any body of equal numbers in modern 
times and within a similar period. He came of good 
stock. His mother was a Miss Keith, whose father 
was cousin-german to the last Earl Marischal of Scot- 
land, and to Frederick's great Field Marshal. His 
father, whose people appear to have come originally 
from Wales, was a remarkable man. Planter and 
pioneer, surveyor and frontiersman, he was a soldier 
in the old French War, and commanded a Virginia 
regiment in the war of the Revolution, in which 
three of his sons also took part. A man of action 
and of the open air, he nevertheless, despite a narrow 
fortune, had in his remote home in Fauquier County 
a good library, and what was still better, a love for 
books and literature. He had fifteen children and 
educated them himself, until he brought to his house 



JOHN MARSHALL 31 

a Scotch clergyman named Thompson, the pastor of 
the village. In this way the oldest son John studied, 
developing a great love for books and for poetry, 
while he grew hardy and strong in the outdoor life 
and with the rough field sports of a new country. 
This lasted until he was fourteen. Then he went to 
Westmoreland County, studied with the Rev. Mr. 
Campbell, came home to study again with Mr. 
Thompson, went as far as Horace and Livy in his 
classics, then began to mingle Coke and Blackstone 
with his literature, and finally, following his natural 
bent, turned entirely to the law. So engaged, the 
Revolution found him. More and more, as the noise 
of impending strife grew louder, he turned from his 
books to drill his company of militiamen. At last 
the storm broke, and Lieutenant Marshall, with his 
company of riflemen in hunting-shirts, was at the 
first fight, when Lord Dunmore was defeated and 
driven back to Norfolk. He later joined the Conti- 
nental Army with his company, was at Brandywine 
and Germantown, wintered at Valley Forge, rose to 
be a Captain, was brave, popular, and deemed to be 
so fair-minded that he was a usual arbiter in all dis- 
putes. The next summer he was at Monmouth, when 
Washington drove the British finally back into New 
York ; later he shared in the assault on Stony Point 
and in the brilliant enterprise of Paulus Hook. 

Soon after this the enlistment term of the men in 



32 JOHN MARSHALL 

Marshall's part of the Virginian line expired, and he 
went home to stay until the State raised fresh troops. 
While he waited he attended the lectures on law of 
Chancellor Wythe, and got a license to practise. 
Then, weary of inaction, he set out alone and on foot 
to rejoin the army as a volunteer. Back he came 
again when his native State was invaded by Leslie in 

1780, and fought under Greene and Steuben. He was 
out again to fight Arnold, and when the would-be 
seller of West Point had been repulsed, Marshall, still 
without men to command, resigned his commission in 

1781. The war, however, was then practically over, 
and he had fought all through it. 

Now he went to the bar and began to practise in 
earnest. He met with immediate success and rose 
with astonishing rapidity. Before he was thirty he 
was an acknowledged leader at a bar of remarkable 
ability. With professional work was also mingled 
much service in the General Assembly, to which he 
was frequently elected, often greatly against his 
own wishes. But presently came the convention 
to consider the Constitution just framed at Phila- 
delphia, and to this Marshall desired and decided 
to go. Virginia was not friendly to the new scheme ; 
his own county was strongly against it. He was 
told that if he would promise to oppose the Constitu- 
tion his return would not be contested. He replied 
that he wished to go in order to support ratification, 



JOHN MARSHALL 33 

ran, and was elected after a sharp contest in a hos- 
tile electorate by sheer force of his personal strength 
and popularity. In the convention he played a 
great part. He contended successfully with Patrick 
Henry, and if he had not the glowing eloquence of 
the elder man, there was none stronger than he in 
reasoning, more unanswerable, more convincing. He 
was one of the determined leaders who finally wrung 
from an unfriendly convention an unwilling majority 
of ten votes in favor of the Constitution. 

Back he went to his courts and his cases. He had 
gone to the convention, not for political preferment, 
but to get the Constitution ratified, and the victory 
was all he wanted. Still he could not escape service 
in the Assembly, and as Washington's administration 
developed its policies, and Virginia, under the deli- 
cate manipulation of Jefferson, turned more and 
more against her great President, Marshall fought the 
battles of his old chief in the Legislature, and on one 
occasion, at least, carried a vote of confidence in the 
National Government. Thus without thought and 
in his own despite he became conspicuous beyond 
the borders of Virginia. Public men in other States 
began to look with interest and admiration upon the 
lawyer already distinguished at the bar who, with 
perfect courage and great intellectual power, was 
fighting the battle of Washington in an anti-Federal- 
ist community ; a man who did not fear even to de- 



34 JOHN MARSHALL 

fend in Virginia the Jay treaty in the darkest hour 
of its unpopularity. Marshall himself in one of his 
rare letters speaks of the warm manner in which the 
leading New England Federalists received him in 
Philadelphia, filled with wonder that a man so sound 
in opinion should exist in Virginia. 

With a political reputation growing and expanding 
so fast, it was only a question of time when he would 
be called to do national work. Washington desired 
that he should accept the mission to France, but he 
declined. Later the same offer came from President 
Adams, and this time the circumstances were such that 
Marshall felt it to be his duty to accept. Our rela- 
tions with France had gone from bad to worse. The 
French government had treated us as if we were little 
else than a vassal state. They had seized our ships 
and spared us no insult. The spirit of the country 
was rising, and the dominant Federalists, if not 
eager, were certainly not averse to a war with the 
revolutionary government at Paris, with which their 
political opponents sympathized and which seemed to 
them representative of those forces of anarchy and 
disorder which it was their own especial mission on 
earth to combat. Mr. Adams, however, feeling pro- 
foundly, as Washington had felt in the case of Eng- 
land, the peril of war to our new government, was 
determined to exhaust every effort to preserve peace 
with our former ally, although the France of the 



JOHN MARSHALL 35 

revolution was as distasteful to him as to any of the 
Federalist leaders. With this purpose in view he 
joined John Marshall and Elbridge Gerry with 
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, who had been refused 
recognition as Minister, in a special mission of peace 
to settle the differences between the two countries. 
This was the duty which Marshall felt he could not 
refuse, and he accordingly sailed from Philadelphia 
for Amsterdam on the 17th of July, 1797. 

Into the history of that famous mission it is not 
necessary to enter. The course of the Directory and 
of Talleyrand was in all ways characteristic of one 
of the most corrupt governments of modern times. 
Our envoys were flouted, refused recognition or recep- 
tion, and were informed by base but accurate agents 
that their only way to obtain their object was to 
bribe, first, Talleyrand, then the Directory, and then 
France herself. The American envoys, like honest 
men, rejected all these advances absolutely and with 
ill-concealed disgust. The American case, stated in 
an argument of great ability, drawn by John Mar- 
shall, was also laid before Talleyrand. But that 
eminent person was not interested in arguments. 
"What he wanted was money. Pinckney and Mar- 
shall saw this clearly enough, secured their passports, 
not, it may be added, without incurring plenty of 
fresh insults, and took their departure. Gerry, de- 
luded and hoodwinked by Talleyrand, remained, and 



36 JOHN MARSHALL 

when a new commission was sent peace was made, 
not because Gerry stayed or because John Adams 
broke with his party in renewing his efforts for 
peaceful settlement, but because hostilities had begun, 
and Truxtun's guns and shattered French frigates had 
taught France that if we would not bribe we could 
at least fight. When Marshall returned to America 
he found events had moved rapidly toward the fight- 
ing stage. The letters inviting our envoys to bribery 
and corruption as well as to humiliation had been 
published, and the country was filled with righteous 
wrath. Marshall was received with acclaim as loud 
as it was deserved, and it was at a banquet in his 
honor that the words attributed to Pinckney were 
given as a toast : " Millions for defence, but not one 
cent for tribute." This was the sentiment of the 
country as well as of the dinner-table, and it por- 
tended a severe reaction against the party of France 
so ably led by Jefferson. 

Into that party struggle Marshall had no inten- 
tion of entering. He had performed well and fear- 
lessly a duty which he had not sought, and his one 
wish now was to go back to his office and his clients 
and to the profession which he loved. But it was 
not to be. President Adams offered him a seat on 
the Supreme Court Bench, which he declined, but 
refusal was not so easy when he was summoned to 
Mount Vernon and urged to stand for Congress. 



JOHN MARSHALL 37 

The course of Jefferson and the anti- Federalists with 
their French sympathies had alarmed Washington 
profoundly. He felt that in order to sustain the 
government the Federalist party must be supported. 
He had led that party in his last years of office, and 
he was so impressed by the political perils of the 
time and by the growing power of foreign influence 
that he could not remain inactive now. So Marshall 
listened to the voice which seldom spoke in vain to 
any American a century ago, and much against his 
will became a candidate for Congress. His honest 
and manly stand in Paris and the honor and ap- 
plause he had gained at home, however, could not 
save him from the attacks of Jefferson and his fol- 
lowers. They opposed him strenuously, crying out 
against him as a monarchist, which was the Jeffer- 
sonian language to describe any man who liked a 
strong central government or who believed that the 
United States was a nation and not an alliance of 
petty republics. The contest was heated and the 
majority small, but Marshall won, and aided by his 
personal popularity carried the Richmond district, — 
a very considerable feat. 

The Congress to which he was chosen was a mem- 
orable one. The Federalist party by sheer force of 
ability, not only in the Executive but in both 
branches of Congress, had established the new 
government, organized its machinery, and founded 



38 JOHN MARSHALL 

its policies. It was a vitally necessary work, but 
the men who had wrought it had not only incurred 
the usual hostility which always meets those who 
are doers of deeds, but they also had the additional 
unpopularity which was due both to their superior 
abilities and their uncompromising and often over- 
bearing methods. They had carried their measures 
with difficulty, for they rarely possessed a working 
majority in Congress, and this condition had been a 
useful check upon them. Now, however, the attempt 
of France to bribe our envoys had produced a just re- 
vulsion of feeling against the party of Jefferson, 
which had made extravagant admiration of France 
a test of American patriotism, and in the true colonial 
spirit forced our politics to turn upon the affairs 
of Europe. The Federalists carried the election 
triumphantly, and found themselves with a majority 
such as they had never known. Successful and 
effective under difficult and adverse conditions, 
unlimited power turned their heads, and their over- 
bearing and arrogant tendencies asserted themselves. 
Their victory became the precursor of their ruin. 

John Marshall, living in a hostile atmosphere, a 
Federalist in Virginia, was a party man of the hard 
fibre which is found under such circumstances, but 
he also had learned in the same school to gauge 
public opinion and the possibilities of action far 
better than the men of the North, accustomed to 



JOHN MARSHALL 39 

Federalist supremacy. Extreme men from New- 
England thought him over-moderate, if not waver- 
ing, because he voted against those natural but most 
injudicious measures, the Alien and Sedition Acts. 
In doing so Marshall was neither timid nor waver- 
ing, but simply wise, as the events of the next four 
years were to show. And if his critics could have 
looked afar into the future they would have seen 
the Virginian Federalist, whose beliefs were founded 
upon a rock, alone and in the midst of enemies up- 
holding and extending the principles they loved, 
when many of their own faith had deserted or 
fallen by the wayside, after their party organiza- 
tion had disappeared, and even when their great 
party name had passed out of existence and was 
heard only as a byword and a reproach. 

But whether thought too moderate in his views or 
not, John Marshall went to the front as a leader of 
his party and as a leader of the House. He shrank 
from no conflict, and upheld the fundamental prin- 
ciples of his party in a manner of which few men 
were capable. The conspicuous triumph of his con- 
gressional career, and space forbids the mention of 
any other, was his argument in the Jonathan Rob- 
bins case. Thomas Nash, alias Jonathan Robbins, 
taking part in a mutiny, had committed a murder 
on a British frigate, escaped, been captured in this 
country, and then resisted extradition on the 



40 JOHN MARSHALL 

ground that he was an American who had been 
impressed. President Adams directed that he 
should be given up if his identity were proved as 
well as grounds sufficient for commitment had the 
crime been committed in the United States. The 
court thought both facts were proved, and the man, 
who later confessed that he was not an American, 
was given up by the President's order under a 
clause of the Jay treaty. It is quite needless to 
explain that an administration which undertakes to 
respect and fulfil treaty obligations to England is 
an inviting object of attack to the thinkers of the 
opposing party, and presents a tempting field for 
the investment of political capital. Mr. Livingston 
of New York introduced a resolution censuring the 
President for his action, more especially for his inter- 
ference with the judiciary, and Marshall spoke for 
the defence. Into that luminous and convincing 
argument I cannot enter here. Albert Gallatin sat 
near the speaker taking notes for a reply. The 
pencil moved more and more slowly, the notes be- 
came fewer and fewer, and at last stopped. " Do 
you not mean to reply to him?" said a friend. 
" I do not," said Gallatin, " because I cannot." 
Many of the opposition thought the same, and the 
resolution was defeated by a vote of nearly two 
to one. 

Marshall's career in the House, however, was as 



JOHN MARSHALL 41 

short as it was brilliant. The break had finally come 
between Mr. Adams and the Hamiltonian Federalists 
in his cabinet whom he had inherited from Wash- 
ington. Wherever the right lay it was a lamentable 
business, and a potent cause of the Federalist defeat. 
The remoter consequences of this famous quarrel do 
not concern us here, but the immediate result was 
the retirement of McHenry from the War Depart- 
ment, which was at once offered to Marshall and 
declined. Hard upon McHenry's withdrawal came 
that of Pickering from the Department of State, and 
this great post Marshall accepted, resigning his seat in 
Congress in order to do so. It was a difl&cult and 
thankless task to assume these duties just at the close 
of an administration, with defeat impending and the 
party divided into bitterly hostile factions. Yet 
such was Marshall's tact and such the respect for his 
character that he commanded the confidence of the 
whole party. He completely satisfied Mr. Adams 
and yet retained the intimate friendship of Hamil- 
ton. He was entirely true to the President's policy 
and yet held the admiring regard of Wolcott, and 
even of Pickering, whom he supplanted. In the 
foreign relations with which he was charged the time 
was too short for the full development of his influ- 
ence, but we can see in his despatches the strong 
American spirit and the quiet but unflinching way 
in which he gave other nations to understand that 



42 JOHN MARSHALL 

we must go along our own paths, and that our deal- 
ings with one nation were no rightful concern of any 
other. 

The last troubled months of the Adams adminis- 
tration, however, soon came to an end. On the 4th 
of March, 1801, a month after he had been sworn in 
as Chief Justice, Marshall retired from the State De- 
partment. Let us look at him a moment as he 
stands at the threshold of his great career. He is 
forty-five years old and in the full maturity of his 
powers. He is very tall, very spare, rather loose- 
jointed and careless in his movements. A little un- 
gainly, perhaps, one observer thinks, with the air of 
the mountains and of the early outdoor life still about 
him. Evidently muscular and strong; temperate, 
too, with all the vigor of health and constitution 
which any work or responsibility may demand. He 
is not handsome of face with his angular features and 
thick, unruly hair growing low on his forehead over 
rather small but very piercing black eyes. None the 
less the face is full of intelligence and force, and all 
observers, however much they differ in details, alike 
agree that the bright eyes are full of fun, and that 
about the firm-set mouth there plays a smile which 
tells of that generous and hearty sense of humor 
which pierces sham and, as Story says, is too honest 
for intrigue. 

No one can say to-day whether Marshall realized 



JOHN MARSHALL 43 

as he left the State Department that the great work 
of his life lay all before him. We know it now, — know 
that all his past career had been only preparatory for 
that which was to come. And what a training it 
had been ! First of all, he was a lawyer, made so by 
the strong bent of his mind, in the full tide of suc- 
cessful practice, and holding his well-won place in 
the front rank of the American bar. He had been 
a soldier of long and hard service, and had faced 
death in battle many times. A wide parliamentary 
experience had been his, drawn from many terms in 
the Virginia Legislature, from the Constitutional Con- 
vention, and a session of Congress. He had been in 
Europe, had seen European politics at close range, 
and had measured swords with the ablest, most un- 
scrupulous, and most corrupt statesman and diplo- 
matist of the Old World. He had served as a 
Cabinet Minister, and there had studied the relations 
of his country to the movements of world politics. 
He had been a man of affairs great and small, and 
had lived and fought in the world of men. This 
varied education, these diverse experiences, may 
seem to have been superfluous for one who was to 
fill a purely judicial office, and yet they were never 
more valuable to any man than to him who was to 
be the Chief Justice of the United States at that pre- 
cise period. When Marshall laid down the states- 
man's office and took up that of the lawyer, his work 



44 JOHN MARSHALL 

as a statesman was still to do. How great that work 
was I shall try to show. 

When Marshall took his seat on the Supreme Bench, 
he brought with him not only his legal genius and 
training and his wide and various experience in poli- 
tics and diplomacy, but also certain fixed convictions. 
He was a man who formed opinions slowly, and who 
did not indulge himself in a large collection of cardi- 
nal principles. But the opinions which he formed 
and the principles which he adopted after much hard 
and silent thought were immovable, and by them he 
steered, for they were as constant as the stars. He 
had one of those rare minds which never confound 
the passing with the eternal or mix the accidental 
and trivial with the things vital and necessary. 
Hence the compatibility between his absolute fixity 
of purpose in certain well-ascertained directions and 
his wise moderation and large tolerance as to all else. 
To these qualities was joined another even rarer, the 
power of knowing what the essential principle was. 
In every controversy and in every argument he went 
unerringly to the heart of the question, for he had 
that mental quality which Dr. Holmes compared to 
the instinct of the tiger for the jugular vein. As he 
plucked out the heart of a law case or a debate in 
Congress, so he seized on the question which over- 
rode all others in the politics of the United States 
and upon which all else turned. 



JOHN MARSHALL 45 

This vital question was whether the United States 
should be a nation, or a confederacy of jarring and 
petty republics, destined to strife, disintegration, and 
decay. In a well-known letter to a friend, Marshall says 
that he entered the Revolution filled with " wild and 
enthusiastic notions." Most young men of that period, 
imbued with such ideas, remained under their control, 
and in the course of events became ardent sympathizers 
with the unbridled fanaticisms of the French Revolu- 
tion, or at least ardent opponents of anything like a 
strong and well-ordered government, and equally 
zealous supporters of State rights and separatist doc- 
trines. Not so John Marshall. With characteristic 
modesty he ascribes the fact that he did not continue 
under the dominion of his "wild and enthusiastic 
notions" to accident and circumstances when it 
really was due to his own clear and powerful intel- 
lect. In the struggle with England he came to see 
that the only hope of victory lay in devotion to a 
common cause, in being soldiers of the Union and 
not of separate colonies, and that the peril was in the 
weakness of the general government. It seems 
simple enough to say this now, but the central idea 
was as a rule grasped feebly and imperfectly, if at 
all, by the young men of that period. Like Hamilton, 
Marshall worked it out for himself ; and in that same 
letter he says that it was during the war that he 
came to regard America as his country and Congress 



46 JOHN MARSHALL 

as his government. From that time he was an 
American first and a Virginian second, and from the 
convictions thus formed in camp and on the march 
he never swerved. Here was the ruling principle 
of his public life, and to the establishment of that 
principle his whole career and all his great powers 
were devoted. This made him a Federalist. It was 
this very devotion to a fundamental principle which 
was the source of that temperate wisdom which 
made him avoid the Alien and Sedition Acts, because 
by their violence they endangered the success of the 
party which had in charge something too precious to 
be risked by indulging even the just passion of the 
moment. But the moderation in what he regarded 
as non-essential was accompanied by an absolutely 
unyielding attitude when the vital question was 
touched. Despite the criticisms of the extreme 
Federalists upon his liberality, there was no more 
rigid believer in the principles which had brought 
that party into existence than the man who became 
Chief Justice one hundred years ago. 

Holding these beliefs, what was there for him to 
do, what could he do in a position wholly judicial 
and with every other branch of the government in 
the hands of his political foes ? He was confined to a 
strictly limited province. To his political opponents 
the entire field of political action was open. At the 
head of these opponents was Thomas Jefferson, who 



JOHN MARSHALL 47 

hated him intensely. It could not well be otherwise. 
Not only were these two Virginians politically 
opposed, but they were antagonistic in nature and 
temperament. " There are some .men," said Rufus 
Choate, " whom we hate for cause, and others whom 
we hate peremptorily." Both descriptions apply to 
the feeling which Jefferson cherished toward Mar- 
shall. They were as wide apart as the poles. Jeffer- 
son wrote brave, blustering words about the desir- 
ability of " watering the tree of liberty once in 
twenty years with the blood of tyrants," and was him- 
self the most peaceful of men, one who shrank from war 
and recoiled from bloodshed, and who was a rather 
grotesque figure of a war governor in hurried flight 
when the British invaded Virginia. Marshall had 
served in the army for five years. The hunger and cold 
of Valley Forge, the trials of the march, the dangers of 
retreat, the perils of many battles, the grim hazards 
of the night assault, were all familiar to him, and he 
never talked at all about watering anything with 
blood or about bloodshed of any sort. Jefferson was 
timid in action ; subtle, acute, and brilliant in intellect, 
given to creeping methods. To him, therefore, Mar- 
shall, the man of powerful mind, who was as simple 
and direct as he was absolutely fearless, and who 
marched straight to his object with his head up and his 
eyes on his foe, was particularly obnoxious. Marshall, 
moreover, had crossed Jefferson in many ways. He 



48 JOHN MARSHALL 

had led opposition to him in Virginia, and had 
wrested from him a Congressional district. Now 
Marshall was placed in a great position, beyond the 
reach of assault, and yet where he could observe, 
and perhaps thwart, Jefferson's most cherished 
schemes. Marshall in his own way entirely recipro- 
cated Jefferson's feelings. He distrusted him and 
despised his methods, his foreign prejudices, and, 
what seemed to Marshall, his devious ways. So 
strong was this hostility that it almost led him to 
make what would have been the one political mis- 
take of his life, by supporting Burr for the Presi- 
dency when the election of 1800 was thrown into 
the House of Representatives. From this he was 
saved by his own wisdom and good sense, which 
were convinced, by Hamilton's reasoning, that Jeffer- 
son, whom Marshall knew, was a less evil than Burr, 
whom he did not know, but who was known only 
too well to Hamilton.^ 

1 lie wrote of Jefferson to Hamilton in 1801 that " by weakening 
the ofEce of President he will increase his personal power. He will 
diminish his reponsibility, sap the fundamental principles of the 
government, and become the leader of that party which is about to 
constitute the majority in the legislature. The morals of the author 
of the letter to Mazzei cannot be pure." 

Van Sautvoord says, in his "Lives of the Chief Justices," p. 342, 
on the authority of an eyewitness, that after Burr's trial there was 
a final cessation of all personal intercourse between Jefferson and 
Marshall, and that two or three of the Justices of the Supreme Court 
followed the example of their chief. 

Age did not change or soften Marshall's opinion of Jefferson. In 



JOHN MARSHALL 49 

Jefferson and his party came into power with a 
great predominance destined to grow more complete 

1821 (July 13) he wrote to Judge Story (Proceedings Massachusetts 
Historical Society for October and November, 1900, p. 328) : 

"What you say of Mr. Jefferson's letter rather grieves than sur- 
prises me.* It grieves me because his influence is still so great that 
many, very many, will adopt his opinions, however unsound they 
may be, and however contradictory to their own reason. I cannot 
describe the surprise and mortification I have felt at hearing that Mr. 
Madison has embraced them with respect to the judicial department. 

" For Mr. Jefferson's opinion as respects this department it is not 
difficiilt to assign the cause. He is among the most ambitious, and, I 
suspect, among the most unforgiving of men. His great power is 
over the mass of the people, and this power is chiefly acquired by 
professions of democracy. Every check on the wild impulse of the 
moment is a check on his own power, and he is unfriendly to the 
source from which it flows. He looks, of course, with ill will at an 
independent judiciary. 

"That in a free country with a written constitution any intelligent 
man should wish a dependent judiciary, or should think that the 
Constitution is not a law for the court as well as the legislature, would 
astonish me, if I had not learnt from observation that with many 
men the judgment is completely controlled by the passions. The 
case of the mandamus may be the cloak, but the Batture f is recol- 
lected with still more resentment." 

Again he wrote on September 18, 1821 : 

" A deep design to convert our government into a mere league of 
States has taken strong hold of a powerful and violent party in Vir- 
ginia. The attack upon the judiciary is in fact an attack upon the 
Union. The judicial department is well understood to be that 
through which the government may be attacked most successfully, 
because it is without patronage, and of course without power. And 
it is equally well understood that every subtraction from its jurisdic- 
tion is a vital wound to the government itself. The attack upon it 

* The letter here commented on was probably the letter to William C. Jarvis, 
printed in Washington's edition of the Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 7, pp. 
177-179, in which Jefferson denies the right of the Judges to issue a mandamus to 
any "executive or legislative oificer to enforce thefulfihnentof their official duties," 
and asserts that it is a "very dangerous doctrine" to "consider the judges as the 
ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions." 

t The first of these references is to the opinion of the Chief Justice in the case of 
Marbury v. Madison (1 Cranch, 153). The second reference is to the protracted 
litigation which involved the title to what was known as the Batture, near New 
Orleans, and in which Mr. Jefferson took a strong personal interest. 
4 



50 JOHN MARSHALL 

as the years went by. They were in principle 
hostile to the government which they were chosen 
to conduct. They were flushed with victory. They 
meant to sweep away all the Federalists had done ; 

therefore is a masked battery aimed at the government itself. The 
■whole attack, if not originating with Mr. Jefferson, is obviously 
approved and guided by him. It is therefore formidable in other 
States as well as in this, and it behooves the friends of the Union to 
be more on the alert tlian they have been. An effort will certainly 
be made to repeal the twenty-fifth section of the judicial act." 

In December, 1832, he wrote to Judge Story about the nullification 
resolutions of South Carolina, then under discussion in Virginia. 
The following passage is of great interest as showing his profound 
comprehension of the movement coupled with his accurate prediction 
of the fate of West Virginia, which came to pass thirty years later, 
as well as his undying feeling against Jefferson as the originator of 
these evils : 

" On Thursday these resolutions are to be taken up, and the debate 
will, 1 doubt not, be ardent and tempestuous enough. I pretend not 
to anticipate the result. Should it countenance the obvious design of 
South Carolina to form a Southern Confederacy, it may conduce to a 
southern league — never to a Southern government. Our theories are 
incompatible with a government for more than a single State. We 
can form no union which shall be closer than an alliance between 
sovereigns. In this event there is some reason to apprehend internal 
convulsion. The northern and western section of our State, should 
a union be maintained north of the Potomac, will not readily connect 
itself with the South. At least, such is the present belief of their 
most intelligent men. Any effort on their part to separate from 
Southern Virginia and unite with a Northern Confederacy may proba- 
bly be punished as treason. ' We have fallen on evil times.'" 

" I thank you for Mr. AVebster's speech. Entertaining the opinion 
he has expressed respecting the general course of the administration, 
his patriotism is entitled to the more credit for the determination he 
expressed at Faneuil Hall to support it in the great effort it promises 
to make for the preservation of the Union. No member of the then 
opposition avowed a similar determination during the Western Insur- 
rection, which would have been equally fatal had it not been quelled 
by the well-timed vigor of General Washington. We are now gather- 
ing the bitter fruits of the tree even before that time planted by 
]Mi-. Jefferson, and so industriously and perseveringly cultivated by 
Virginia." 



JOHN MARSHALL 51 

they intended to interpret the Constitution until 
naught was left and put the national government 
and the national life into a strait-jacket. In the 
process of time they found themselves helpless in 
the grip of circumstances and governing by the 
system of Washington and Hamilton, whose methods 
and organization were too strong for them to over- 
throw. But at the start this was not apparent. 
The separatist principle seemed to be supreme, and 
Jefferson's followers threw themselves upon the work 
of the Federalists, and in their rage even undertook 
to break down the judiciary by the process of im- 
peachment, — a scheme which failed miserably, but 
which no doubt cherished the hope of reaching at 
last to the chief of all the Judges. 

In their pleasant plans and anticipations of re- 
venge it must have seemed as if nothing could stop 
the onset of an all-powerful President backed by 
a subservient Congress. Surely the national prin- 
ciple, the national life, the broad construction of the 
Constitution, would shrivel away before such an 
attack. There seemed no one in the way, for how- 
ever much Jefferson, ever watchful, may have sus- 
pected, his own followers certainly did not reckon 
as very formidable the great lawyer sitting far apart 
in the cold seclusion of a court room. Yet there 
the enemy was. There he sat intrenched. His 
powers were limited, but his opponents were to find 



62 JOHN MARSHALL 

out "what he could do with them. They were to 
learn by bitter experiences that even these limited 
powers in the hands of a great man were sufficient 
to extend the Constitution and to build it up faster 
and far more surely than they by Executive act or 
Congressional speeches could narrow it or pull it 
down. Those of them who survived were destined 
to behold the ark of the national life, carried through 
the dark years of the first decade of the century, 
emerge in safety ere the second closed, and the 
national principle which they had sought to smother 
rise up in great assertion and with a more splendid 
vitality than any one dreamed possible as the fourth 
decade began and the man who had done the deed sank 
into his grave in all the majesty of his eighty years. 

How did John Marshall do this work, this states- 
man's work as Chief Justice of the United States ? 
It is all there in his decisions. To show it forth as 
it deserves would require a volume. Only an out- 
line which will roughly mark out the highest peaks 
in the range is possible here. 

The first blow was struck in 1803, in the famous 
case of Marbury against Madison. Marbury applied 
for a mandamus to compel Mr. Madison to deliver 
to him his commission as justice of the peace, which 
had been signed and sealed by Mr. Adams and 
withheld by his successor. Marshall held that the 
applicant had a right to the commission; that his 



JOHN MARSHALL 53 

right having been violated, the law of the country 
afforded a remedy ; that the case in its nature 
was one for mandamus, but that being an original 
process, the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction, be- 
cause the act of Congress conferring such jurisdic- 
tion, not being authorized by the Constitution, was 
null and void. He declared, in other words, that 
the Constitution was supreme, that any law of Con- 
gress in conflict with it was null and void, that the 
Supreme Court was to decide whether this conflict 
existed ; and then, going beyond the point involved, 
he boldly announced that if the application had been 
properly made, the Federal court could compel the 
Executive to perform a certain act. At one stroke 
he lifted the National Constitution to the height 
of authority, and made the tremendous assertion of 
power in the court, which he declared could nullify 
the action of Congress and control that of the Ex- 
ecutive if the necessary conditions should arise. 
Small wonder is it that Jefferson was irritated and 
alarmed to the last degree, and that he complained 
bitterly of the manner in which the Chief Justice 
had travelled out of the record in order to tell the 
world that he might, if he so willed, curb the author- 
ity of the President. But the assertion of the 
supremacy of the Constitution and of the power 
of the court to decide a law unconstitutional has 
remained unshaken from that day to this. 



54 JOHN MARSHALL 

In Marbiiry against Madison, Marshall asserted 
the supremacy of the Constitution and the power of 
the court in relation to the other branches of the 
National Government. But important and far reach- 
ing as this was, the vital struggle was not among 
the departments created by the same instrument. 
The conflict upon which the fate of the country 
turned was between the forces of union and the 
forces of separation, between the power of the nation 
and the rights of the States. It was here that Mar- 
shall did his greatest work, and it was this issue 
which he desired to meet above all others. 

In the case of the United States against Peters in 
1809, he decided that a State could not annul the 
judgment, or determine the jurisdiction, or destroy 
rights, acquired under the judgments of the courts 
of the United States. Thus he set the national 
courts above the States, and he followed this up in 
the following year by deciding, in Fletcher against 
Peck, that a grant of lands was a contract within 
the meaning of the Constitution, and that a State 
law annulling such a grant was in conflict with the 
Constitution of the United States, and therefore null 
and void. The United States courts, it was to be 
henceforth understood, were not only above and be- 
yond the reach of State legislatures, but they could 
nullify the laws of such legislatures. No heavier or 
better directed blow was ever struck against State 



JOHN MARSHALL 55 

rights when those rights were invoked in order to 
thwart or cripple the national power. 

The trial of Burr in 1807, although not bearing 
upon the central principles to which Marshall de- 
voted his best efforts, gave him an opportunity to 
define treason under the Constitution. On this 
memorable trial there can be no doubt that he stood 
between the accused, whom the government wished 
to destroy, and the just popular sentiment which 
would have fain hurried Burr to the gallows. That 
Marshall's rulings were correct and that he laid 
down the American law and definition of treason in 
a manner which subsequent generations have ac- 
cepted, cannot be questioned. But this cannot be 
said of the famous ruling by which he granted the 
motion to issue a subpcena duces tecum, directed to 
the President of the United States. If his desire 
was to fill Jefferson with impotent anger and with a 
sense of affront and humiliation, he succeeded amply. 
In any other view granting the motion was a fail- 
ure and a mistake, for instead of exhibiting the 
power of the court it showed its limitations. The 
Chief Executive of the nation clearly cannot be 
brought to court against his will, for higher duties 
are imposed upon him, and still more decisive is the 
practical consideration that the court is physically 
powerless to enforce its decrees against the Chief 
Magistrate, by whom alone in the last resort the 



56 JOHN MARSHALL 

decrees of the court can be carried into execution. 
The animosity toward Jefferson which nearly led 
Marshall into the political blunder of supporting 
Burr in 1801 was the probable cause of this single 
mistake in his long management of the judicial 
power. Yet even though it was an error, it gives a 
vivid idea of the bold spirit which was able to make 
a limited court not only the bulwark of the Con- 
stitution, but the chief engine in advancing national 
principles during a long series of years, when every 
other department was arrayed against it and a hos- 
tile political party was everywhere predominant. 

To assert the supremacy of the National Constitu- 
tion over the constitutions and laws of the States 
was, however, only half the battle, and was in its 
nature a defensive position. It was necessary not 
only to maintain but to advance. It was not 
enough for the Constitution to stand firm; it must 
be made to march, and this was done by a series of 
great decisions, through which Marshall developed 
and extended the constitutional powers and author- 
ity, not merely of his own court, but of the Execu- 
tive and of Congress. In 1805, in the United States 
against Fisher, he found in the clause of the Con- 
stitution giving Congress the right to pass all neces- 
sary and proper laws for carrying into execution the 
powers vested in them by the Constitution, authority 
for a law making the United States a preferred 



JOHN MARSHALL 57 

creditor. In 1819, the Dartmouth College Case, the 
most famous perhaps of all Marshall's cases, was 
decided. In this he gave to the clause relating to 
the impairment of contracts, already used as the 
foundation of the judgment in the case of Fletcher 
against Peck, a vigorous reinforcement and exten- 
sion. In holding that a State could not alter a 
charter derived from the British Crown in colonial 
times, the Chief Justice carried the constitutional 
power in this regard to an extreme, justifiable, no 
doubt, but from which a man less bold would have 
recoiled. 

In the same year he pushed the same doctrine 
home in Sturges against Crowninshield, holding that 
a State could not pass an insolvent law releasing 
debts contracted before its passage. 

In the still greater case of McCullough against 
Maryland, also heard at this time, he affirmed and 
extended the national power with one hand while 
he struck down the authority of the State with the 
other. No man could add much to the argument in 
which Hamilton defended the constitutionality of a 
National Bank, but Marshall presented it again in 
a manner equal to that of the great Secretary, and 
which carried with it an authority which only the 
court could give. He held the bank to be consti- 
tutional under " the necessary laws " clause, and in 
one of those compact, nervous sentences, so charac- 



58 JOHN MARSHALL 

teristic of the man, he defined once for all the scope 
of that provision. " Let this end be legitimate," he 
said, " let it be within the scope of the Constitution, 
and all means which are appropriate, which are 
plainly adapted to that end, which are not pro- 
hibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the 
Constitution, are constitutional." What an en- 
largement of national power is contained in these 
pregnant words ! What a weapon did this single 
weighty sentence place in the national armory ! 
The constitutionality of the bank being thus af- 
firmed, the law of Maryland taxing its branches 
fell, of course, as null and void, for the power to tax 
is the power to destroy. 

That profound legal thinker, Andrew Jackson, 
differed from Marshall on this question. He 
wrecked the bank of the United States, fostered the 
pet State banks, and left the panic of 1837 to deso- 
late business, and overwhelm his successor and his 
party in defeat. But although Jackson tore down 
the superstructure, upon the foundation laid by Mar- 
shall in an opinion, where the foresight of the states- 
man went hand in hand with the matchless reasoning 
of the lawyer, arose the national bank system, which, 
after forty years, still stands before us unshaken 
and secure. 

Two years after the Maryland case, in Cohens 
against Virginia, he held that the appellate jurisdic- 



JOHN MARSHALL 69 

tion of the Supreme Court extended to decisions of 
the highest State courts, and that a State itself could 
be brought into court when the validity of the State 
law under the National Constitution was involved. 

In 1824, in Gibbons against Ogden, he interpreted 
and breathed life into the clause giving Congress 
power to regulate commerce, and held unconstitu- 
tional a law of the State of New York which was in 
conflict with that clause. In so doing he overruled 
some of the ablest judges of the State of New York, 
and cut off a right hitherto supposed to be un- 
questioned. But he did not hesitate, and another 
extension of the national power followed. 

In Craig and others against the State of Missouri, 
under the clause forbidding a State to emit bills of 
credit, he annulled a law of that State which author- 
ized the issue of loan certificates which were held to 
come within the prohibited description. 

In The Cherokee Nation against Georgia, he held 
that the Indians were not a foreign nation, and 
therefore not entitled to sue in the Supreme Court ; 
and then, with his wonted felicity of phrase, he de- 
scribed them as a " domestic and dependent " nation 
dwelling within the boundaries of the United States 
and subject only to the laws and treaties of the 
central government — a proposition capable of wide 
application, and carrying with it possibilities of a 
great extension of the national authority. Follow- 



60 JOHN MARSHALL 

ing out this principle in the case of Worcester 
against Georgia, he held that a citizen of the United 
States going into the Cherokee country could not be 
held amenable to the laws of Georgia. The admin- 
istration was out of sympathy with Marshall's 
views, the State of Georgia was openly defiant, yet 
after some months of delay the State gave way, the 
missionaries were released, and the court triumphed. 
In this list of cases, so baldly stated, many have 
been omitted and none has been explained and ana- 
lyzed as it deserves. But these examples, chosen 
from among the greatest and most familiar, serve to 
show the course which Marshall pursued through 
thirty-five years of judicial life. These decisions are 
more than a monument of legal reasoning, more than 
a masterly exposition of the Constitution, for they 
embody the well-considered policy of a great states- 
man. They are the work of a man who saw that 
the future of the United States hinged upon the one 
question whether the national should prevail over 
the separatist principle, whether the nation was to 
be predominant over the States — whether, indeed, 
there was to be a nation at all. Through all the 
issues which rose and fell during these thirty-five 
years, through all the excitements of the passing 
day, through Louisiana acquisitions and the rela- 
tions with France and England, through embar- 
goes and war and Missouri Compromises, and all 



JOHN MARSHALL 61 

the bitter absorbing passions which they aroused, 
the Chief Justice in his court went steadily forward 
dealing with that one underlying question beside 
which all others were insignificant. Slowly but 
surely he did his work. He made men understand 
that a tribunal existed before which States could be 
forced to plead, by which State laws could be an- 
nulled, and which was created by the Constitution. 
He took the dry clauses of that Constitution and 
breathed into them the breath of life. Knowing 
well the instinct of human nature to magnify its 
own possessions — an instinct more potent than 
party feeling — he had pointed out and developed 
for Presidents and Congresses the powers given 
them by the Constitution from which they derived 
their own existence. Whether these Presidents and 
Congresses were Federalist or Democratic, they were 
all human and would be certain, therefore, to use 
sooner or later the powers disclosed to them. That 
which Hamilton in the bitterness of defeat had 
called " a frail and worthless fabric," Marshall con- 
verted into a mighty instrument of government. 
The Constitution which began as an agreement 
between conflicting States, Marshall, continuing the 
work of Washington and Hamilton, transformed 
into a charter of national life. When his own 
life closed his work was done — a nation had been 
made. Before he died he heard this great fact 



62 JOHN MARSHALL 

declared with unrivalled eloquence by Webster, al- 
thougrh the attitude of the South at that moment 
filled him with gloomy apprehensions and made him 
fear that the Constitution had failed.^ It was re- 
served to another generation to put Marshall's work 
to the last and awful test of war and to behold it 
come forth from that dark ordeal, triumphant and 
supreme. 

What of the man who did all this ? The states- 
man we know, the great lawyer, the profound jurist, 
the original thinker, the unrivalled reasoner. All 
this is there in his decisions and in his public life, 
carved deep in the history of the times. But of the 
man himself we know little ; in proportion to his 
greatness and the part he played we know almost 
nothing. He was a silent man, doing his great 
work in the world and saying nothing of himself, 
to a degree quite unknown to any of the heroes of 
Carlyle, who preached the doctrine of silence so 
strenuously in many volumes. Marshall seems to 
have destroyed all his own papers; certainly none 
of consequence are known to exist now. He wrote 
but few letters, if we may judge from the volumi- 
nous collections of the time, where, if we except 
those addressed to Judge Story, lately published, he 
is less represented than any of the other leaders of 

^ See Letters to Story, Proceedings of Massachusetts Historical 
Society for October, 1900. 



JOHN MARSHALL 63 

that period. Brief memoirs by some of his contem- 
poraries, scattered letters, stray recollections and 
fugitive descriptions, are all that we have to help 
us to see and know the man John Marshall. Yet 
his personality is so strong that from these frag- 
ments and from the study of his public life it stands 
forth to all who look with understanding and sym- 
pathy. A great intellect ; a clear sight which was 
never dimmed, but which always recognized facts 
and scorned delusions ; a powerful will ; a courage, 
moral, mental, and physical, which nothing could 
daunt, — all these things lie upon the surface. 
Deeper down we discern a directness of mind, a pur- 
ity and strength of character, a kind heart, an abund- 
ant humor, and a simplicity and modesty which move 
our admiration as beyond the bounds of eulogy. 
He was a very great man. The proofs of his great- 
ness lie all about us, in our history, our law, our 
constitutional development, our public thought. 
But there is one witness to his greatness of soul 
which seems to me to outweigh all the others. He 
had been soldier and lawyer and statesman ; he had 
been an envoy to France, a member of Congress, 
Secretary of State, and Chief Justice. He did a 
great work, and no one knew better than he how 
great it had been. Then when he came to die he 
wrote his own epitaph, and all he asked to have 
recorded was his name, the date of his birth, the 



64 JOHN MARSHALL 

date of his marriage, and the date of his death. 
What a noble pride and what a fine simplicity are 
there ! In the presence of such a spirit, at the close 
of such a life, almost anything that can be said 
would seem tawdry and unworthy. His devoted 
friend, Judge Story, wished to have inscribed upon 
Marshall's tomb the words " Expounder of the Con- 
stitution." Even this is something too much and 
also far too little. He is one of that small group of 
men who have founded States. He is a Nation- 
maker, a State-builder. His monument is in the 
history of the United States, and his name is written 
upon the Constitution of his country. 



OLIVER ELLSWORTH 1 

In this presence and on an occasion like this 
tradition and custom alike suggtot that I should 
speak to you either of the law, of the part which 
those who follow that honored profession have taken 
in our history, or of that which they ought now to 
take in the life of our time. Yet, rash as it may 
seem, in addressing those whose studies have taught 
them more than any other studies can teach the im- 
portance of precedents, I shall do neither. I shall 
not speak to you of laws or constitutions, but of a 
maker of both. I shall not try to discourse to you 
upon the place which the legal profession has filled 
in the past, or that which it ought to fill in society 
and politics to-day, but I shall ask your attention to 
what one lawyer achieved during a most momentous 
period of our history. I shall not, as the common 
phrase has it, descend from the general to the par- 
ticular, but I shall advance from the boundless 
region of abstract principles to the sharply defined 
facts of a great example. I propose to speak to you 
of a man who in his time played many parts, who 

1 An address delivered at Xew Haven before the graduating class 
of the Law School of Yale University, June 23, 1902. 



66 OLIVER ELLSWORTH 

was a State judge, and Chief Justice of the United 
States, a framer of the Constitution, a maker of 
laws when the Federal Statute Book offered a blank 
page, a statesman, a Senator, a diplomatist. Here, 
indeed, is an impressive list of public positions of 
the highest rank ; but public office is, after all, only 
an opportunity, and there is many a case where all 
has been said of the holder when the places he held 
have been duly catalogued. That which concerns 
posterity is what the man did with his opportunity, 
what he meant to his own generation, what he 
means to us. 

To me, Oliver Ellsworth, who filled the spacious 
places and met the large opportunities which I have 
enumerated, has come to mean a good deal. His- 
torians, students, and lawyers know Oliver Ells- 
worth, not intimately perhaps, but still they have an 
acquaintance with him sufficient to give a certain 
reality to his name. Yet my own recent inquiries 
have led me to fear that to most of us he is little 
more than a name, that he has dropped most unde- 
servedly into that interesting but rather pathetic 
group of historic figures to whom Froude gave the 
melancholy title of " Forgotten Worthies." He has 
richly merited a better fate, and should find a biog- 
rapher with room and verge enough to do him full 
justice. But while we await the biographer, if we 
cannot build a fitting monument, we can at least add 



OLIVER ELLSWORTH 67 

something to the cairn which history in its progress 
has already gathered to preserve his memory. 

Let us try first to place him aright. He was not 
one of the greatest leaders of an extraordinary period. 
He cannot stand with the man who was dominant in 
that period alike in peace and war, our first President. 
He had not the creative power and fiery force of 
Hamilton nor the profound originality and sweeping 
conceptions of John Marshall. But he was one of 
that remarkable body of men who gathered round 
these leaders of war, statecraft, and politics, and 
without whom the leaders could not have succeeded. 
Oliver Ellsworth was a fine example of a fine type. 
The contribution to human history at that time and 
in this country, made by the men whom he exem- 
plified, was expressed in the campaigns and govern- 
ment of Washington, in the policies and organizations 
of Hamilton, and in the decisions of Marshall. It 
consists of the American Revolution and the forma- 
tion of the United States. Follow our own history 
from that day to this, consider what the United States 
is to the world at the present time, and you can see 
how momentous and how far reaching was the work 
of those men who tore one empire asunder and then 
laid firm and deep the foundations of another. If 
you seek their monument, "Survey mankind from 
China to Peru," and when your eyes rest at last upon 
the United States you will have found it. 



68 OLIVER ELLSWORTH 

All actors, great and small alike, in the decisive 
crises of history, when the world turns in her sleep 
with pain and wakes to give birth, after much sore 
travail, to vast changes in the relations of men and 
in the movements of society, have a deep meaning. 
Every man, for example, who stands out in relief 
against the red light of the French Terror has an 
absorbing interest, which no effort of fiction can 
obtain, and which holds us captive as we watch him 
race through a few months of furious life to sudden 
death and an immortality of fame or infamy. So 
it is with the men who made our revolution, and 
then among the ruins of the old system built a new 
and better one ; it is important to know and under- 
stand each and all of them. This is most true in 
this instance, for when we turn to Oliver Ellsworth 
we meet one of the most conspicuous of the makers 
and builders engaged in that mighty work. 

Who and what was he? He was of English stock, 
third in descent from the ancestor who had come 
over to America before the first great Puritan migra- 
tion had ceased on the assembling of the Long Parlia- 
ment. His name is Saxon, derived from that of a 
Saxon village in Cambridgeshire. There is the story 
of his blood and race, — Saxon, English, Puritan, 
three words full of meaning. They bring before us 
the wild bands bearino; down on Britain from the Ger- 
man forests, the slow welding of tribes and races into 



OLIVER ELLSWORTH 69 

the people henceforth to be known as English ; they 
recall the spirit of sacrifice for conscience' sake 
mingling with that older spirit of adventure, which 
in the dim past had driven the long boats of the 
Norseman, Dane, and Saxon across the North Sea, 
and which reviving in Elizabeth's men made 
prize of the American wilderness. It was a strong 
race, a sturdy stock to spring from; and these 
Ellsworths, complete exemplars of it, settled in 
Connecticut, flourished and increased, and there, in 
the town of Windsor on April 29, 1745, was 
born to David Ellsworth and Jemima Leavitt, his 
wife, a son whom they named Oliver. The father 
was a farmer, his family neither rich nor poor, 
simple in their lives, frugal in their habits, religious, 
hard-working, in all their ways typifying the thou- 
sands of households who then made up what was 
known as New England. Under such influences 
and surroundings Oliver Ellsworth grew up. The 
conditions were not easy, the outlook on life was 
limited in many directions, — was sometimes hard, 
sometimes narrow. But such conditions at least 
bred strong men and not weaklings ; they developed 
virtues with the vigor of the open air about them, 
and not the pallor of the cloister; they endowed 
those who felt their discipline with the qualities for 
strife and endurance by which nations are freed and 
states founded and governed. 



70 OLIVER ELLSWORTH 

Among the marked characteristics of this race 
transplanted from the pruned and ordered garden of 
England to the rough wilderness of the new world 
was a deep reverence for learning. The ruling 
ambition among all families, strongest perhaps in 
the poorest, was that the eldest son at least should 
go to college and be thereafter lawyer, minister, or 
judge. So from the farm life and the town school 
at Windsor Oliver Ellsworth made his way to Yale, 
as was most natural, and thence after two years for 
some unexplained reason^ to Princeton, where he 
graduated with credit. 

College course finished, he returned to Windsor, 
studied law, was admitted to the bar, was given a 
small farm by his father, and upon that eked out by 
some trifling legal fees lived along in a thrifty, highly 
economical fashion, which it is said clung to him 
through life, and with no very brilliant prospects im- 
mediately apparent. Then one day in the Hartford 
Court the opportunity flies open, the native capacity 
suddenly becomes obvious to the vicinage, and after 
that the advance is steady and rapid. So rapid in- 
deed is his rise that by the time he had passed thirty 
he was in the front rank and master of a practice 

1 Since this address was delivered I have learned that the " reason " 
was the college bell turned upside down one winter night and filled 
with water, which thereupon froze. The results were temporary silence 
on the part of the bell and the subsequent departure of young Ells- 
worth to the New Jersey college. 



OLIVER ELLSWORTH 71 

considered one of the best in Connecticut. But while 
Ellsworth was thus moving forward the political 
forces which were to dominate the closing years of 
the century were moving too. As a boy he had 
witnessed the opposition to the Stamp Act and the 
rejoicing at its repeal. When he grew to manhood 
it looked at first as if all was to be peaceful as of 
yore, and then the low mutterings of a storm were 
heard ; the apparent peace, it seemed, was only a truce, 
and the clouds began to gather more darkly than be- 
fore. He was still in the first flush of his young success 
when news came that Boston harbor was black with 
tea, and hard upon that strange defiance followed the 
Boston Port Bill driving the colonies into the union 
which was more perilous to England than all else. 
So the American Revolution marched forward, and 
Ellsworth went with it. No doubts, no hesitations, 
seemingly a matter of course with him that he should 
be with his country in resistance to a British policy 
which meant a hopeless dependence and submission, 
which would render the colonies lifeless provinces 
when the aspirations of empire and the hope of a 
great future were stirring unconsciously but strongly 
in their hearts. The young lawyer thus drawn 
into the vortex of the great movement served in the 
militia, and took part in the labors of the General As- 
sembly of which he had for some years been a mem- 
ber. His ability and energy thus displayed in the 



72 OLIVER ELLSWORTH 

work of the State carried him speedily to a larger 
field. In 1777 he was chosen a delegate in Con- 
gress, and took his seat in that body the following 
year. 

The decline of the Continental Congress in power, 
character, and influence, as compared with its re- 
markable strength and ability in the first session, 
had already set in, but had not yet proceeded very 
far. Ellsworth found among his associates his col- 
league Roger Sherman, Samuel Adams, Robert and 
Gouverneur Morris, Witherspoon, Richard Henry Lee, 
Laurens, and later John Jay, and he was entirely fit 
to hold high place among men of this quality. He 
was active, efficient, with large capacity sorely 
needed just then for the work of administration, 
and he was placed at once on committees charged 
with the heaviest responsibilities. His most impor- 
tant service, however, was as a member of the Com- 
mittee of Appeals, whose functions were judicial and 
whose duty it was to hear appeals from the local 
Admiralty courts. This Committee was the first im- 
perfect beginning of the Federal judicial system from 
which in process of time was to come the great or- 
ganization and wide jurisdiction of the United States 
Courts. It was one of the many examples of the 
efforts of Congress with no proper machinery and no 
adequate powers to supply the absolute necessities of 
a central government ; it was one of many stumbling 



OLIVER ELLSWORTH 73 

steps toward the making of a nation, and these 
abortive attempts were the hard school in which the 
men who met later at Philadelphia in 1787 gained 
the wisdom and experience which resulted in the 
Constitution of the United States. Thus Washing- 
ton learned in the field, through many bitter years of 
trial and disappointment caused by the utter failure 
of Congress as a war-making, money-raising body, 
that the one thing necessary for America was a bet- 
ter union and a well-organized national government, 
— high objects to which he was to devote heart and 
mind and strength in the closing years of his life. 
By Congress, Hamilton was taught that no financial 
soundness or success was possible without a complete 
change in the methods of the confederate system and 
the formation of a strong central government. And 
in Congress likewise on this Committee of Appeals 
Ellsworth learned the imperative need of a Federal 
Judiciary and the utter helplessness of the Continen- 
tal Congress to do justice or to carry out its de- 
crees so painfully illustrated by the cause which 
later became famous as the Olmstead case. There 
in the dark confusion of revolutionary war, in that 
Committee of Appeals so ample in high ability, so im- 
potent in powers of execution, were conceived the 
thoughts which one day would give birth to the judi- 
cial system of the United States. 

Many were the services which Ellsworth performed 



74 OLIVER ELLSWORTH 

in Congress only to be detected by n careful exam- 
ination of parliamentary journals, very cold and 
lifeless now, but none the less recording, in dry and 
formal words, deeds, efforts, and failures to which 
living men gave their hearts and brains and over 
which human passions once burned brightly enough. 
But Ellsworth's greatest, most patriotic service was 
that he remained in Congress working as best he 
could for the common cause until the end, — until 
1782, when the great stress was over and the 
country was passing out of the trials of war to 
prepare for the equally hard trials of peace. This 
was no light task and no trifling sacrifice. . The 
first Congresses had numbered in their membership 
all that was best and strongest in America. They 
set forth to the world in a series of state papers of 
unrivalled ability the arguments and the position 
of the revolting colonies, and the eyes of mankind 
were fixed upon them. They made the Revolution 
and they declared independence. Then the decline 
set in. The greatest man of all left Congress to 
command the army, and others followed him to the 
field. Franklin crossed the waters to seek the aid 
of Europe for the fighting colonies, and others fol- 
lowed him on the same momentous errand. Still 
others of the delegates left the central government 
for service in their States, where under the chansrino; 
pressure of war they seemed to be most needed. 



OLIVER ELLSWORTH 75 

Thus the high ability of Congress was lowered, and 
then the vices of the system became more and more 
apparent. Congress was a legislative body striving to 
perform executive functions, — a plan always doomed 
to failure, and in this case impossible because Con- 
gress had no real power and could only make appeals 
to jarring and indifferent States. As Congress sank 
into weakness and contempt, jobbery raised its ugly 
head, intrigue invaded it, and smaller men took the 
places of the great leaders who had made the body 
famous. Men of the right sort shrank from it, and 
so decrepit did it become that toward the end it 
seemed little more than an additional obstacle for 
Washington to overcome. Very especial gratitude 
and honor are due, therefore, to the few men of the 
first rank, like Ellsworth, who clung to it to the end, 
extorted from it the creation of certain rude execu- 
tive departments, and forced it to the point of not 
altogether abandoning Washington and the army. 
It was hard and thankless work, not shining bril- 
liantly before the eyes of men, but all the more to be 
honored because done in obscurity, in the midst 
of distrust and contempt, and without hope either of 
present applause or of future reward. 

As the war closed, Congress began to show signs 
of a revival in ability with the appearance of Hamil- 
ton and Madison and other men of a younger gen- 
eration, forerunners of the constructive era which 



76 OLIVER ELLSWORTH 

was fast approacliing. With these men Ellsworth 
engaged in more welcome service than in the dark 
years which had gone. But the war was over. He 
had done his share and more, and in the summer of 
1783 he returned to Connecticut, there to begin his 
judicial career as a Judge of the Supreme Court of 
Errors, which was really the upper branch of the 
legislature, and afterwards as a Judge of the Su- 
preme Court. Four years of good work passed with 
much advantage to the law of the State, where the 
decisions were just beginning to be reported and 
preserved, and then the current of the larger life 
caught him again and swept him out once more 
from the quiet haven of the local bench into the 
broad rough ocean of national politics. 

The confederation so carefully labored over by the 
revolutionary Congress had been languidly accepted 
by the States and had come into a rickety existence 
only to prove that it could not survive. The States 
were drawing apart from each other and were torn 
by internal dissensions. The outlook was black, and 
the men everywhere who thought " continentally," 
saw that desperate remedies were imperative and 
took counsel together. The result was the Con- 
vention which met at Philadelphia in the summer 
of 1787. Connecticut was slow to move in the new 
direction, but when she did so at the last moment 
it was to send Roger Sherman, Oliver Ellsworth, 



OLIVER ELLSWORTH 77 

and William Samuel Johnson to represent her in 
the final effort for a better union. 

We have now come to one of the three great 
events in Ellsworth's life, — to an act which fastens 
his name in history and without which the story of 
that eventful summer cannot be told. To trace 
through the records of the Convention all that he 
said and did in the formation of the Constitution 
would be impossible and for my purpose needless, 
because before us there is now a single achievement 
which rises out of the current of events as distinctly 
as a lofty tower on a lonely ledge, and as luminous 
as the light which beams forth from it over the dark 
waste of ocean. There were many anxious moments 
in that Convention, but none so anxious, none when 
the danger of failure and dissolution appeared so 
imminent, as in the contest over the basis of repre- 
sentation. The representatives of the larger States, 
the men who had thought " continentally " and had 
brought about the Convention, like Hamilton, Madi- 
son, Franklin, King, Wilson, and Gouverneur Morris, 
believed that the only solution was to frame a 
government for men and not for imaginary political 
entities called States. The jealousies and the quarrels 
of the old Congress with their resulting impotence 
and confusion had filled many of the leading minds 
with the belief that no government where the States 
as such had power could ever hope for success. 



78 OLIVER ELLSWORTH 

They wanted a government based on population and 
resting solely and directly upon the people of the 
entire nation. To this the small States, strong with 
the instinct of self-preservation, were bitterly opposed. 
Upon Connecticut, strange as it may seem in view 
of her fate as the last and surest stronghold of the 
extreme Federalist doctrines, the brunt of the battle 
in behalf of the small States fell. In this struggle 
Ellsworth and his eminent colleague, Roger Sherman, 
who more than ten years before had developed the 
principle of State representation, were the leaders. 
They both came to the Convention, therefore, im- 
bued with the idea of resisting the over-strong cen- 
tralizing tendency in which they saw at that moment 
great peril. At the very outset Ellsworth moved to 
strike from one of the preliminary resolutions the 
word " national " and insert as a proper title ^* the 
United States." He declared a little later, with equal 
terseness and force, that " the only chance of support- 
ing a general government lies in grafting it on those 
of the original States ; " thus laying down a principle 
long advocated by Sherman, which was as profound 
in its apprehension of the conditions as it was sound 
in its application to the problems of the moment. 
It was on this doctrine that he made his stand when 
the crucial question of representation confronted the 
Convention. Reluctantly yielding to the principle 
of representation according to population for the 



OLIVER ELLSWORTH 79 

lower House, he stood out immovably for the equal- 
ity of the States in the Senate. In company with 
Roger Sherman, who was the leader in the conflict, 
with Patterson of New Jersey, and Bedford of Dela- 
ware, he fought through the debate against such 
brilliant leaders as Hamilton and Madison, Ran- 
dolph and Pinckney, Rufus King, James Wilson, and 
Gouverneur Morris. When the test came Georgia 
split her vote and the other States divided equally. 
The first thought was that the Convention had failed, 
that the hope of union had vanished. But out of 
that equally divided vote came a Committee of Con- 
ference, and out of that conference came the great 
compromise, — representation according to popula- 
tion in the House, equality of the States in the 
Senate.^ 

To show that I have not exaggerated Ellsworth's 
part in this momentous contest, let me cite two high 
authorities. Mr. Bancroft says : " There he more 
than any other shaped the policy which alone could 
have reconciled the great States and the small ones 

^ In the appendix is given a letter from my colleague the Hon. 
George F. Hoar which discusses fully and in the most interesting and 
conclusive manner the respective shares of Sherman and Ellsworth 
in originating and carrying through the great compromise of the 
Constitution which resulted in the establishment of State representa- 
tion in the Senate. I desire to take this opportunity of expressing 
my obligations to Senator Hoar for the advice and assistance which 
he so constantly and so generously gave me in preparing this address, 
as well as for his kindness in allowing me to publish his letter. 



80 OLIVER ELLSWORTH 

and bound them both equally to the Union by recip- 
rocal concessions. He too it was who joined with 
Sherman and successfully intreated that body to bar 
and bolt the doors of the United States against paper 
money." ^ 

Mr. Calhoun said in the Senate : " It is owing — 
I speak it here in honor of New England and the 
Northern States — it is owing mainly to the States 
of Connecticut and New Jersey that we have a 
federal instead of a national government ; that we 
have the best government instead of the most 
despotic and intolerable on the earth. AVho were 
the men of those States to whom we are indebted 
for this admirable government ? I will name them. 
They were Chief Justice Ellsworth, Roger Sherman, 
and Judge Patterson of New Jersey. The other 
States further south were blind; they did not see 
the future. But to the sagacity and coolness of 
those three men, aided by a few others, but not so 
prominent, we owe the present Constitution," ^ 

Now exactly what was it that Ellsworth and 
Sherman did ? They won their victory for equality 
of State representation in one branch of Congress, 
but they did far more even than this, for they and 
the few who stood with them saved the Constitu- 
tion itself and made it possible. Without that com- 

1 Century Magazine, July, 1883, p. 483. 
* Chicago Law Times, vol. ii. p. 112. 



OLIVER ELLSWORTH 81 

promise there would either have been no Constitution 
or the Constitution made without State representation 
would have gone to pieces in the early years at the 
first moment when the large States asserted their 
untrammelled control of the national government. 
All this is very plain to us now, but it is also very 
clear that enormous importance was attached at the 
moment to the construction of the upper House, for 
the equality of the States in the Senate was the one 
provision of the Constitution which the framers 
declared could not be changed without the consent 
of every State. They showed in this way their 
belief that in the combination of representation of 
population with representation by States the very 
existence of the Constitution was involved. In 
pursuance of this fundamental theory they also 
provided that Senators should be elected not by 
direct popular vote but by the men chosen by the 
people who in the legislature constituted the State 
government, and embodied the State as a political 
entity. Just now there is a movement on foot to 
bring about the election of Senators by direct popu- 
lar vote. If successful, it will inevitably be followed 
by proportional representation in the Senate, and the 
most radical revolution conceivable will take place 
in our form of government. We alone among the 
nations possessing representative government have 
fully solved the problem of an upper House resting 



82 OLIVER ELLSWORTH 

upon an independent basis and effective in legisla- 
tion. If the Senate is placed upon the same basis 
as the House and is chosen in the same way by the 
same constituency, its character and meaning depart, 
the States will be hopelessly weakened, the balance 
of the Constitution will be destroyed, centralization 
will advance with giant strides, and we shall enter 
upon a period of constitutional revolution of which 
the end cannot be foretold. When we contemplate 
what the equality of the States in the Senate meant 
at the time of the Philadelphia Convention, what it 
has meant throughout our national life, and what its 
overthrow would mean to-day, we realize the great 
service of Sherman and Ellsworth, and how large 
and enduring a place they must always hold in our 
history. 

Upon Ellsworth's influence in forming other parts 
of the Constitution I need not dwell. It is enough 
here to have shown his large share in the establish- 
ment of the vital principle of the Constitution. An 
adverse fate compelled him to leave the Convention 
before its adjournment and deprived him of the 
satisfaction of signing his name to the great instru- 
ment. But as he came into the Convention the 
champion of the rights of the States which seemed 
at the moment the most serious obstacle to a better 
union, he passed out of the Convention where he 
had won his great victory to become the champion 



OLIVER ELLSWORTH 83 

of the Constitution and to give the rest of his life to 
the development and enlargement of its powers and 
to the upbuilding of a strong national government. 
His first service to the cause was in the Convention 
of Connecticut called to ratify the new Constitution. 
He led the party of ratification, which fortunately 
had a large m.ajority and carried without difficulty 
the adhesion of Connecticut to the new plan. 
There is no better proof of the quality and effective- 
ness of his speeches at that time than the fact that 
Mr. Webster quoted from them in February, 1833, 
when replying to Mr. Calhoun, saying, as he did 
so : "I cannot do better than to leave this part of 
this subject by reading the remarks upon it in the 
Convention of Connecticut by Mr. Ellsworth, a 
gentleman, Sir, who has left behind him on the 
records of the government of his country proofs of 
the clearest intelligence and of the deepest sagacity, 
as well as of the utmost purity and integrity of 
character." 

When the necessary number of States had ratified 
the Constitution and the new government was ready 
to start, Connecticut sent, as one of her first repre- 
sentatives in the Senate, the man to whom that body 
largely owed its existence. Ellsworth was one 6f^ 
the eight Senators who appeared in New York on 
the 4th of March, 1789. There he waited patiently 
for six weeks until the quorum of Congress had 



84 OLIVER ELLSWORTH 

gathered, there he took part in the inauguration of 
Washington, and there he began a service as Senator 
which was to last for seven years. 

Once more time and space forbid me to trace in 
detail the career which makes Ellsworth one of the 
great names in the history of the Senate. In all 
that came before the Senate in those formative 
years, he took a leading part, and it is not easy to 
conceive, in this day so rich in traditions and prec- 
edents, the absolute vacancy which confronted the 
first Senators when they assembled in New York in the 
spring of 1789. There were no laws, no rules, no forms, 
no customs, no practice, no government, nothing but 
the clauses of a freshly drawn, uninterpreted, untried 
Constitution. All was to do. Even the enacting 
clauses of bills had to be formulated by somebody, 
the somebod}^ chanced to be Ellsworth, and the 
manner in which the President and other officers of 
the government were to be addressed was only set- 
tled after long debate. In those momentous years 
the great measures and the far-reaching policies 
which founded the nation and organized the country 
stand out on the pages of history for all men to see 
and admire. But the countless little measures and 
decisions of the passing day by which the firm mass of 
habits, customs, and traditions, often more powerful in 
holding the respect of men, and guarding a country 
from revolution than many great measures of state, 



OLIVER ELLSWORTH 85 

were then founded deep and strong. In both fields 
Ellsworth was a leader. His was one of the guiding 
minds in devising the delicate machinery, the small 
wheels and nicely adjusted mechanism upon which, 
although hidden from sight, all government moves. 
And he also stands out conspicuous as one of the 
chief constructive legislators of a great period of 
construction, for it was he who drafted the Judiciary ^ 
Act, upon which the judicial system of the United 
States has rested ever since, and to which all subse- 
quent legislation for the judiciary has been but 
extension and amendment. This was his second 
service to his country, so large in its scope as to 
give him a lasting place in our legislative history, 
even as the equality of the States in the Senate is 
his enduring monument in the history of our Con- 
stitution. Outside the Senate chamber too, as well 
as within, he fully performed those duties which he 
conceived the Constitution imposed upon the Sena- 
tors as the only constitutional advisers of the Execu- 
tive. He was no stranger to the President. His 
services in the Continental Congress and in the 
Convention had made him known to Washington, to 
whom Ellsworth's high qualities of mind and char- 
acter strongly appealed. When the President made 
his tour of New England at the beginning of his 
administration, he stopped at Ellsworth's house, and 
we get a very human, very illuminating glimpse of 



86 OLIVER ELLSWORTH 

him tliere playing with the children of the Senator 
and singing a song to them. Through all the period 
of Ellsworth's service in the Senate he was one of 
the chosen group of men upon whom Washington 
leaned, whose advice he sought, and whose sugges- 
tions were always welcome. A simple incident 
connected with one of the gravest questions of 
the time, and related by one of Ellsworth's grand- 
sons, will show at once his grasp of our foreign 
policy, and the part he played in the administration 
of Washington : 

"In January, 1794, a majority of the House of 
Representatives was prepared to declare war with 
Great Britain notwithstanding the defenceless state 
of the country. Mr. Ellsworth, though not in the 
Cabinet, was in the confidence of Washington, and 
kept a watchful eye on every subject and circum- 
stance connected with the affairs of the adminis- 
tration and the welfare of the country. He was 
confident that war could be avoided. To accom- 
plish this purpose he, with Governor Strong, Mr. 
King, and Mr. Cabot, his intimate and confidential 
associates, then in the Senate, in February or March, 
1794, met to consult, and, if possible, devise some 
course to secure the country from the awful disaster 
which seemed inevitable, all argument in Congress 
having become ineffectual with the majority. They 
determined upon the expedient of a mission to Eng- 



OLIVER ELLSWORTH 87 

land forthwith to open a negotiation for a treaty on 
the point in controversy between the two nations. 
They agreed to recommend the nomination of John 
Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and perhaps one other, 
whose name is unknown to the writer, for that mis- 
sion. Mr. Ellsworth was designated to confer with 
the President on the subject. He related to him 
the confidential consultation held in relation to the 
alarming condition of the country. . . . 

" General Washington listened to the communica- 
tion with apparent deep concern, and after a long 
and familiar conversation on the subject said : 

" ' Well, what can be done, Mr. Ellsworth ? ' 

"Mr. Ellsworth informed him of the result of 
their consultation, ^that a Minister Plenipotentiary 
be sent to England forthwith,' and named the 
persons selected by himself and friends for the 
mission. 

" It was apparent that to the President this was a 
new project. 

"At the close of the interview the President 
said : * Well, sir, I will take this subject into 
consideration.' 

" Mr. Jay was nominated on the 16th of April, 
and although this measure was scarcely suspected by 
Congress, and a majority of the House of Piepre- 
sentatives was opposed to it, the nomination was 
approved by the Senate by a vote of 18 to 8. The 



88 OLIVER ELLSWORTH 

result of the mission, notwithstanding the intrigues 
of the French Ministry, was the well-known Jay 
treaty. 

" After the treaty was approved by the Senate the 
hostility toward it seemed more alarming than ever, 
and while the President had the subject under con- 
sideration the anxiety of Mr. Ellsworth increased 
with the delay. He thought the least appearance of 
indecision in him would be ruin to the country, that 
every day's procrastination increased the dangers of 
the republic. . . . During this state of suspense by 
reason of General Washington's delay to sign the 
treaty, Mr. Ellsworth walked the hall in the most 
intense anxiety as to the result, and scarcely closed 
his eyes in sound sleep for several nights. 

" While the treaty was under discussion, Mr. Liv- 
ingston offered a resolution ' That the President be 
requested to lay before the House a copy of the 
instructions given to the Minister of the United 
States who negotiated the treaty, together with the 
documents, etc., with the exception of such papers as 
any existing negotiations may render improper.' 
This was adopted (62 to 37), and was sent to the 
President. The members of the Cabinet unanimously 
advised the President not to comply with the resolu- 
tion. Mr. Ellsworth was requested to draw up an 
argument showing that the papers could not be con- 
stitutionally demanded by the House of Representa- 



OLIVER ELLSWORTH 89 

tives, and a message was sent by the President in 
accordance therewith." ^ 

Forbidden, as I have said, by the limitations of an 
address to show what Mr. Ellsworth was as a Sena- 
tor by tracing his work in detail from year to year, 
I cannot leave this most important part of his career 
without trying to indicate by other means what his 
position in the Senate was, and what he meant to 
the men he met there. He was constant in attend- 
ance, shared in all debates, took part in all business 
and in the making of all laws. Influence in the 
Senate always rests largely upon these somewhat 
humdrum qualities of attention, industry, and ac- 
tivity, and how potent Ellsworth's influence was is 
sharply shown by a little anecdote. Aaron Burr, who 
served nearly six years with Ellsworth, said of him, 
" If he should chance to spell the name of the Deity 
with two D's, it would take the Senate three weeks 
to expunge the superfluous letter." 

But we have a witness on this point far more 
important and far more elaborate than Burr. Wil- 
liam Maclay was a Senator from Pennsylvania 
during the first two years of our government. At 
a period when the Senate sat behind closed doors 
and had no records of debates, he kept a careful 
diary narrating their proceedings. Historically 
therefore this diary is valuable, and constitutes the 

» The New York Evening Post, July 3, 1876. 



90 OLIVER ELLSWORTH 

chief claim of its writer to the notice of posterity. 
Senator Maclay's editor and descendant asserts that 
his ancestor was the true founder of the Democratic 
party, an honor usually accorded to Jefferson. If 
consistent opposition to every measure proposed, 
if suspicion and hostility directed unsparingly at 
Washington, Adams, Hamilton, and every one who 
supported or acted with them, if general dissatisfac- 
tion with everything that was done entitle a man 
to be considered the founder of the Democratic 
party, Mr. Maclay certainly preceded Mr. Jefferson 
in all these directions and his descendant's claim of 
glory for him is fully made out. He naturally took 
a very dark view of Ellsworth, and therefore his un- 
willing testimony to that gentleman's place and 
power in the Senate is most valuable. From the 
diary we learn that Ellsworth dealt with every 
point of procedure, with the powers of the Vice- 
President, the manner of receiving the House and 
the style of the enacting clause. To Ellsworth we 
learn was due the resolution by which the Senate 
system of considering bills in Committee of the 
Whole without the Vice-President's leaving the 
chair was established. Ellsworth defended a large 
bench of judges, and Maclay says of the Judiciary 
Act, Ellsworth's great work in our early legislation, 
" This vile bill was a child of his." Maclay also 
thought that this bill would "blow up the Consti- 



OLIVER ELLSWORTH 91 

tution," but posterity knows that it became one of 
the bulwarks of our great charter. Again it was 
the Connecticut Senator who in an elaborate speech 
of high ability asserted that the President's power 
of removal was absolute and the power of appoint- 
ment alone limited, — a doctrine finally accepted 
by the Senate after eighty years of intermittent 
discussion, legislation, and debate. On the same 
authority we find that Ellsworth did not confine 
himself to legal and constitutional questions, but 
presented the bill to organize the territories, and had 
a leading part in measures relating to the army and 
tariff. It is a remarkable record. Consider care- 
fully this dry list of momentous questions, and then 
you realize how the influence and power of this 
statesman, long since dead, are felt, more than a 
century after his work was done, in the daily con- 
duct of the business of our great government. 

And what are the comments of the diarist who 
records so many deeds and credits such large activi- 
ties to a single man ? They are interesting and in 
the broadest sense instructive. He says that Ells- 
worth leads, that he is all powerful and eloquent in 
debate, and that he is, although " endless," really a 
man of great ingenuity and ability. On one occa- 
sion Maclay said to him, " The man must knit his 
net close that can catch you ; but you trip some- 
times." Yet at the same time he says of Ellsworth 



92 OLIVER ELLSWORTH 

that " it is truly surprising to me, the pains he will 
display to varnish over villany and to give roguery 
effect without avowed license." He describes Ells- 
worth as a tool of " Hamilton and his crew," whom 
he regarded as totally corrupt, and toward the close 
of the session says, " the man has abilities, but 
abilities without candor and integrity are charac- 
teristics of the devil." What a picture is here ! 
At the very dawn of the Republic a President 
weak, ambitious, inclined to monarchy, the tool of 
designing men, — such according to the diarist was 
George Washington. The Vice-President also lean- 
ing to monarchy, violent, arbitrary, absurd, — such, if 
we believe Maclay, was John Adams. Then there 
are " Hamilton and his crew," corrupt, dangerous, 
battening on the public treasury, with an equally 
corrupt set supporting the Secretary in Congress. 
The Senate is quite as bad ; it is deeply corrupted, 
false to freedom and to democratic ideals. One of 
its great leaders is a man engaged in " varnishing 
over roguery " and " destitute of candor and integ- 
rity." Ex pede Herculean! If Ellsworth was a 
man of this kind, what must the other Senators 
have been ? 

How false it all is ! How well we know now the 
greatness, the unspotted purity of Washington, the 
fiery courage and unbending patriotism of Adams, 
the vast constructive genius of Hamilton, the com- 



OLIVER ELLSWORTH 93 

manding abilities, the lasting services, the unsullied 
honor of Ellsworth ! What a lesson too is here if we 
will but take the trouble to learn it! I never re- 
member the time when I have not heard the Senate 
of the moment described as at its lowest point, as 
having fallen far down from the high level of the 
earlier and better days. Then I read Maclay and 
take heart, for if he is right and our Senate and our 
government were such as he described, and if the 
bitter critics of the moment are also right and we 
are worse now than in the earlier and better days, 
then indeed has the impossible come to pass, for the 
Republic still survives, greater and more powerful, 
more honored at home and abroad than ever before. 
Then I feel sure that the critics of this kind, past and 
present, must be wrong, for if they were not the Re- 
public would have died. The Maclays, like the poor, 
are always with us, sole proprietors of righteousness, 
undisturbed by any outcry against their self-imposed 
monopoly. They have their value, no doubt, although 
their own estimate of their worth is probably be- 
yond the market price. I would not willingly speak 
harshly of any living successor of Maclay, but of the 
dead critic fronting the merciless gaze of history, 
something may be said. Malignity easily assumes 
the garb of a noble independence, while envy, hatred, 
and all un charitableness delight to masquerade in the 
guise of the most loved and admired virtues. As -we 



94 OLIVER ELLSWORTH 

see now from the cool eminence of a new century the 
distant figure of Oliver Ellsworth rise up clear and 
serene, his brow laurelled with good deeds done for 
his country, his memory fragrant with patriotism, 
honor, and noble thoughts, it is well to turn to 
Maclay's diary and to remember that this dead states- 
man fought once in the dust of the arena, was thus 
attacked and slandered and misjudged even by one 
who stood near him. The career of the statesman 
and jurist shines all the brighter by the contrast, and 
History with her calm voice, as she unrolls the page 
and spreads the whole record before our eyes, bids us 
even now to be temperate in judgment, to be tolerant 
as well as just, to look out upon the present with a 
kindly as well as a searching gaze and above all to 
take heart and hold fast to a deep and abiding faith 
in the American people and in the Republic of our 
love. 

I have dwelt at length on Ellsworth's services in 
the Senate, and yet am conscious that I have not done 
justice to it or shown in such measure as ought to be 
shown his attitude upon many great questions, espe- 
cially of foreign relations, where he gave all his influ- 
ence and support to the neutrality policy, to resistance 
to the encroachments of France, and to the mainte- 
nance of peace with England, culminating in the Jay 
treaty, for which he did battle in the angry conflict 
that arose over its provisions. But I must be con- 



OLIVER ELLSWORTH 95 

tent with the effort I have made to bring out in re- 
lief the brilliancy of his Senatorial service, and the 
great part he played in the formative period of our 
national government. 

The struggle over the treaty with England marked 
indeed the close of his work in the Senate. The re- 
jection of Rutledge by the Senate and the refusal of 
Gushing to accept the Chief Justiceship made it more 
than ever important to fill that great post with a 
man who would command not only the support of 
the Federalists, but the confidence of the country as 
well. After much deliberation Washington turned 
to Ellsworth, and appointed him to the vacant place. 
He accepted with reluctance the duty which had come 
to him unsought, and was sworn in as Chief Justice 
on the 8th of March, 1796. He came to his great 
office well qualified both by professional training and 
by experience as a statesman and law-maker. He 
served well and efficiently, and maintained and 
strengthened the character of the court. Yet it 
was not as Chief Justice that his best work was 
done. Ellsworth did good service in admiralty cases, 
with which he was particularly familiar, and in de- 
fining and settling the jurisdiction of the Court. 
His most famous opinion was in favor of the doc- 
trine of perpetual allegiance, which has since been 
abandoned. But there was no case where he ren- 
dered a decision which is at all comparable in ira- 



96 OLIVER ELLSWORTH 

portance with his achievements in the Constitutional 
Convention or in the Senate of the United States. 
In his years of service as Chief Justice the great con- 
stitutional questions by the decision of which the 
national principle was to be built up and extended 
did not meet him. They were to be reserved for 
the touch of a mightier hand than his. Yet on the 
bench of the Supreme Court, although he did not 
originate doctrines nor leave an enduring mark upon 
our histor}^ as he had done when delegate and Sen- 
ator, he nevertheless met thoroughly and well all the 
requirements of his high place. 

Had he remained Chief Justice, there can be no 
doubt that he would have left a very great reputa- 
tion, but a call came to him after four years of 
judicial service which he could not refuse. We 
became engaged in actual hostilities, though not in 
declared war, with France. The Federal leaders 
were for war, but John Adams determined to make 
one more effort for peace. He profoundly believed, 
as Washington had believed, that the young nation 
must be kept from war if possible. In this he was 
greatly right, but he was right in such a wrong way 
that, while he saved the country from grave danger, 
he shattered his party in doing it. His first step 
was a blunder, for he named William Vans Murray 
alone to re-open relations with France. Something 
stronger than that was needed if the confirmation of 



OLIVER ELLSWORTH 97 

the Senate was to be obtained, and the President, 
quickly conscious of his error and of impending 
defeat, added Ellsworth and Patrick Henry, for 
whom Governor Davie of North Carolina was after- 
wards substituted, to the Commission. Thus forti- 
fied, the Commission was confirmed. Ellsworth's 
health and inclination alike opposed an acceptance 
which involved not only a long journey and trying 
responsibilities, but also a sharp difference of opinion 
with the other Federalist chiefs, the friends with 
whom he had labored for years. But he felt now, as 
he had felt at the time of the Jay treaty, that 
peace was essential to the young Republic and its 
unformed government, and that no honorable effort 
should be spared to preserve it. The request of the 
President came to him as an order to a high duty, 
and such an order it was not in him to disobey. 

On November 3, 1799, the envoys sailed from 
Newport, and on the 27th they reached Lisbon. For 
those days the voyage was quick, but brief as the 
interval had been it had sufficed to change the face 
of the European world. The 18th Brumaire had 
come and gone, the Directory had fallen, and Napo- 
leon was master of France. Warned by the experi- 
ence of their predecessors, Ellsworth and Davie 
proceeded slowly toward France, and sent a letter to 
announce their coming. Talleyrand was still in 
office, as ready no doubt to be bribed as before, but 



98 OLIVER ELLSWORTH 

his new master was not an idiot like the Directory, 
which for a little illicit gain had been ready apparently 
to bring on war with America. The utter folly of 
making war on the United States at that moment 
was indeed obvious at once to Napoleon. The mes- 
sage went back to the American envoys that " they 
were awaited with impatience and would be received 
with warmth." Ellsworth and Davie pressed for- 
ward, reached Paris on March 2, 1800, met Murray 
there, and in a few days were engaged in negotiations 
with a Commission appointed by the First Consul and 
headed by Joseph Bonaparte. 

There is a tradition that when Napoleon's pierc- 
ing gaze fell upon Ellsworth at the audience given 
to the American Commissioners soon after their 
arrival, he said, '' I must make a treaty with that 
man." The story may readily be believed, for differ- 
ent as Ellsworth was in his sober attire from those 
about him, upon whom the light of the coming 
glories of the empire was already beginning to shine, 
he was a man certain to attract attention anywhere. 
He was tall and erect. He had a strong face, and 
large penetrating blue eyes looked out fearlessly 
upon the world from beneath heavy arched brows. 
His expression was pleasant and his presence com- 
manding, instinct with the dignity of one who had 
presided over a great court. He was particular and 
very quiet in his dress, with his hair powdered in a 



OLIVER ELLSWORTH 99 

fashion even then becoming antique, and he still 
wore silk stockings and silver knee-buckles after the 
mode of a vanishing period. Generally absorbed in 
meditation, often talking to himself when he walked 
or rode, his thoughts were nevertheless so ordered 
and disciplined, that when he spoke his words came 
rapidly and earnestly as he marshalled his argu- 
ments and stated his opinions. Altogether a stately 
figure, we may say, one very typical of a strong race 
with an obvious force of character and intelligence 
which was perceived at once by the greatest genius 
of the time, as his glance fell upon the sober dress 
and calm face of the New England statesman and 
jurist, descendant of many Puritans. 

The negotiations thus begun, proceeded smoothly 
enough. The revival of the old treaties of alliance 
demanded by the French and the indemnities in- 
sisted upon by the Americans for the captures made 
by the privateers of the Republic which had brought 
about actual hostilities were found incapable of ad- 
justment. The extreme Federalists at home thought 
the negotiations should have ended then, but Ells- 
worth laid aside the irreconcilable points for a more 
convenient season, and with his colleagues made a 
treaty by which France agreed to pay her debts to 
the United States, and the commercial relations of 
the two countries were arranged. Free ships were 
to make free goods ; the neutral flag was to protect 



100 OLIVER ELLSWORTH 

the cargo, and commerce was made reciprocally free 
on the footing of the most favored nation. The 
work was chiefly done by Ellsworth, and can be 
summed up in a word. He abandoned the discussion 
of the old grievances, and made a new treaty cover- 
ing similar questions in the future, which was calcu- 
lated to stimulate the expansion of our trade and 
which averted war. The treaty was not thought a 
very brilliant one at the time, but it is easy to see 
now that it was eminently wise. It was infinitely 
more important to the United States to be rid of the 
treaty of 1778, than to secure indemnities for the 
captures of the French privateers. By Ellsworth's 
policy we shook ourselves free from an entangling 
alliance, and the indemnities, a mere matter of money, 
found a later settlement. These questions thus post- 
poned were the crucial points of the negotiation. 
The treaty itself was well enough for commercial 
purposes, but its great work was in stopping hostili- 
ties and assuring an honorable peace, which was of 
great moment to our new government. It also 
brought about a friendly understanding and opened 
the way to the Louisiana treaty, an inestimable 
benefit. Altogether it was good work well done, 
the work of a statesman far-seeing, strong, and cour- 
ageous, who looked beneath the surface and was 
guided by general principles and by a settled policy. 
The treaty was signed on the 30th of September, 



OLIVER ELLSWORTH 101 

1800, and was followed by a fete given to the 
American envoys, which was more significant of 
the desire of France to be on good terms with 
the American Republic than anything that had 
happened. I will borrow Mr. Bancroft's account of 
this now forgotten event, which made much noise in 
its day, and was carefully noted by European observ- 
ers of contemporary politics and of the signs of the 
times. 

" The French government resolved to give them 
on their departure the clearest proof of the enduring 
good will of France for the American Republic. It 
chanced that Joseph Bonaparte, who was the richest 
of the family, possessed a magnificent country-seat at 
Morfontaine, which lies some leagues from Paris on 
the road to Havre. There, on their way, at the 
chateau of Joseph Bonaparte, under whose lead the 
treaty with the United States had been concluded 
on the part of France, the American ministers were 
invited to be the guests at a farewell festival before 
their embarkation. 

" The American envoys arrived at the village of 
Morfontaine about two o'clock in the afternoon, and 
found there a large number of the French magis- 
trates already assembled. At four o'clock Napoleon 
Bonaparte, the First Consul of France, . . . entered 
the chateau amidst salutes from artillery and bands of 
music. During the evening the castle and adjacent 



10- 01 1\ KU Kl.l.SWOKTH 

buildings >Yoro brilliantly iiluniinatod. Tho approval 
of the treaty by the First Consul, of which assurance 
wa^ formally given about eight o'clock in the evening. 
wa^ followed by the tiring of c;\nnon. After this the 
guests, about one hundred and titty in number, were 
seated at t>ables in thive large halls. To the largest 
of them the name was given of the • Hall of the 
Union.' It was superbly decorated with wreaths 
and numerous inscriptions commemorating the 4th 
of July. 17 To. and other days famous for iin^x>rtant 
actions in America during tlieir struggle for indepen- 
dence. The initial letters of France and America 
were inscribed in many places. The City of Phila- 
delphia, which was then the seat of the Federal 
Congress, and Havre, which was the port for 
the embarkation of the American ministers, wei*e 
represented with an angel on the wing from 
HavT^ to Philadelphia, bearing an olive branch. 
The second hall was called the * Hall of "Washing- 
ton." and was adorned with his bust and the French 
and American tlags standing side by side. The 
third hall was called the ' Hall of Franklin.' whose 
bust was its ornament. All the decorations were 
especially designed to commemorate the indepen- 
dence of the United States and French liberty. 
In that spirit the First Consul. Kapoleon, then just 
thirty-one years of age. g:ive as the tirst toast : 'The 
memory of those who have fallen in the defence of 



OLJVKR KLLSWOliTll 103 

French and American liberty.' The second toast 
was proposed by the Third Consul, LeVjrun : ' The 
union of America with the powers of the North to 
enforce respect for the liberties of the seas.' Last 
of all, Cambaceres, the Second Consul, in honor of 
the President of the United States, proposed *The 
successor of Washington.' After supper there was 
a brilliant and ingenious display of fireworks in the 
garden. Next followed an exquisite concert of miLsic, 
and about midnight the private theatre was opened 
for the performance of two short comedies, in which 
the best of the actors and actresses from Paris played 
the parts. At the conclusion of one of the plays a 
song complimentary to the United States was sung j 
and thus the evening came to an end." 

The Chief Justice was not well when he left the 
United States, and the Atlantic voyage followed by 
a winter journey through Spain and by the cares 
and anxiety of the negotiation broke his health 
down completely. Before leaving France he re- 
signed the Chief Justiceship, and it was with Ymt 
slight hopes of improvement that he crossed to 
England. There, however, contrary to expectation 
he grew rapidly better. The repo.se after so many 
labors, the climate, the attentions which he re- 
ceived from bench and bar, and a congenial society, 
all helped him to recovery. His stay in England, 
free from care, diversified by little journeys, one 



104 OLIVER ELLSWORTH 

among others to the cradle of his race, made one of 
the pleasantest periods in a laborious life. He 
stayed in London and its neighborhood until the 
spring of 1801, and then returned to America and to 
his home in Windsor. But complete withdrawal 
from public affairs was not to be his portion. He 
had scarcely settled down in his well-loved home 
when he was appointed again to his old place in 
the Governor's Council, which still constituted the 
Supreme Court of Errors of the State. It was a 
duty to be performed, and weary and worn as he 
was, he accepted it. There he served, after his life- 
long habit, faithfully and well, despite severe and 
recurring attacks of disease. The old judicial sys- 
tem was changed in 1807, and the Chief Justiceship 
under the new arrangement was offered to Ells- 
worth. He at first consented, but then withdrew 
his acceptance. It was too late for more work, for 
the performance of further duties. The hand of 
death was on him, and on the 27th of November, 
1807, he died at Windsor. 

So a life filled with high service came to an end. 
Even imperfectly as I have traced it we can see, I 
think, what manner of man he was. As I have 
studied Oliver Ellsworth and come to know him, it 
seems to me as if he must have been the type of 
man Milton had in mind when he described a free 
commonwealth. " What government," he asks, 



OLIVER ELLSWORTH 105 

*' comes nearer to the precept of Christ than a free 
commonwealth, wherein they who are the greatest 
are perpetual servants and drudges to the public at 
their own cost and charges ; neglect their own af- 
fairs, yet are not elevated above their brethren; 
live soberly in their families, walk the street as 
other men, may be spoken to freely, familiarly, 
friendly, without adoration?" 

After such fashion he passed through his great 
public career. Distinguished at the bar, he brought 
the training of a lawyer to his work as a statesman. 
Most eminent as a maker of constitutions and laws, 
he carried his large experience with him to adorn 
the bench, where he occupied the highest place. As 
a diplomatist he united all his powers as statesman 
and jurist in making a treaty which, dust to-day, was 
one of the momentous events in the early years of 
conflict and peril. In the history of Connecticut he 
stands side by side with his illustrious colleague 
Roger Sherman, whom he modestly says he took 
for his model, and who was one of the most original, 
most resolute, and most far-seeing men of that great 
period. 

In the history of the United States the vital com- 
promise which secured the existence of the Consti- 
tution is branded with his name, and the great 
system of the Federal courts and of the jurispru- 
dence of the United States bears upon its foundation 



106 OLIVER ELLSWORTH 

stone the name of the lawyer who drafted the first 
Judiciary Act. "Ellsworth was one of the pillars 
of Washington's administration," said John Adams. 
Can there be a better summary of his life or higher 
praise of a public man than that simple sentence ? 
The man whom Washington trusted we may safely 
revere, and he needs no monument to recall his 
memory, for that is safe while the Constitution of 
his country and the administration of her laws live 
on in strength and power, the bulwarks of the great 
Republic. 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

HIS ORATORY AND HIS INFLUENCE i 

Statues and monuments can justify their exist- 
ence on only two grounds, — the nature of the sub- 
ject they commemorate or as works of art. They 
ought, of course, to possess both qualifications in the 
fullest measure. Theoretically, at least, a great art 
should ever illustrate and should always have a 
great subject. But art cannot command at will a 
fit subject, and it is therefore fortunately true that 
if the art be great it is its own all-sufiicient warrant 
for existence. That Michael Angelo's unsurpassed 
figure called "Meditation" should be in theory a 
portrait statue and bear the name of one of the 
most worthless of the evil Medicean race is, after all, 
of slight moment. The immortal art remains to de- 
light and to uplift every one who looks upon it with 
considerate eyes ; and it matters little that all the 
marvellous figures which the chapel of the Medici 
enshrines were commanded and carved in order to 

1 An address delivered in "Washington, January 18, 1000, before 
the President of the United States and his Cabinet, the Supreme 
Court and the Congress of the United States on the occasion of the 
unveiling of a statue of Daniel Webster. 



108 DANIEL WEBSTER 

keep alive the memory of a remarkable family 
steeped in crime and a curse to every people among 
whom they came. On the other hand, hard as it 
often is, we can endure bad art if there be no ques- 
tion that the great man or the shining deed deserves 
the commemoration of bronze or marble. But when 
the art is bad and the subject unworthy or ephem- 
eral, then the monument, as was said of Sir John 
Vanbrugh's palaces, is simply a heavy load to the 
patient earth and an offence to the eyes of succeed- 
ing generations. 

In these days the world sins often and grievously 
in this way, and is much given to the raising of 
monuments, too frequently upon trifling provocation. 
Yet the fault lies not in the mere multiplication of 
monuments. The genius of Greece and of the Re- 
naissance multiplied statues, and very wisely, too, 
because art then was at once splendid and exuber- 
ant. But great sculptors and painters are as few 
now as they were plentiful in the age of Phidias or 
of Michael Angelo and Donatello, and we erect 
statues and monuments with a prodigal hand chiefly 
because we are very rich, and because mechanical 
appliances have made easy the moulding of metal 
and the carving of stone. It behooves us, therefore, 
not only to choose with care artists who can give us 
worthy work for posterity to look upon, but also to 
avoid recklessness in rearing monuments upon slight 



DANIEL WEBSTER 109 

grounds. At present there seems no disposition to 
heed these salutary principles. The cities and towns 
of Europe and of England swarm with modern 
statues and monuments as a rule ugly or common- 
place, too often glaring and vulgar, and very fre- 
quently erected to the memory and the glory of the 
illustrious obscure and of the parish hero. We 
Americans sin less often, I think, in these respects 
than the Old World, but we follow their practice 
none the less and with many melancholy results. 
We should break away from the present example of 
Europe and realize that the erection of an enduring 
monument in a public place is a very serious matter. 
We should seek out the best artists and should permit 
no monuments to deeds or to men who do not deserve 
them and who will not themselves be monumental 
in history and before the eyes of posterity. Here in 
Washington, especially, we should bear this principle 
in mind, for this is the city of the nation, and it 
should have no place for local glories or provincial 
heroes. Yet even here we have been so careless that 
while we have given space to one or more statues of 
estimable persons, the fact of whose existence will 
be known only by their effigies, we have found as yet 
no place for a statue of Hamilton, the greatest con- 
structive statesman of our history, or of the great 
soldier whose genius made the campaign of Vicksburg 
rival that of Ulm. 



110 DANIEL WEBSTER 

To-day no such doubts or criticisms need haunt or 
perplex us. We can thank the artist who has con- 
ceived, and most unreservedly can we thank the 
generous and public-spirited citizen of New Hamp- 
shire who has given, the statue which we unveil this 
morning. If any one among our statesmen has a 
title to a statue in Washington, it is Daniel 
Webster, for this is the national capital, and no 
man was ever more national in his conceptions and 
his achievements than he. Born and bred in New 
Hampshire, which first elected him to the House, he 
long represented Massachusetts, the State of his 
adoption, in the Congress of the United States, and 
thus two historic Commonwealths cherish his 
memory. But much as he loved them both, his 
public service was given to the nation, and so given 
that no man doubts his title to a statue here in this 
city. Why is there neither doubt nor question as to 
Webster's right to this great and lasting honor 
half a century after his death? If we cannot an- 
swer this question so plainly that he who runs may 
read, then we unveil our own ignorance when we 
unveil his statue and leave the act without excuse. 
I shall try, briefly, to put the answer to this essen- 
tial question into words. We all feel in our hearts 
and minds the reply that should be made. It has 
fallen to me to give expression to that feeling. - 

What, then, are the real reasons for the great 



DANIEL WEBSTER 111 

place which Webster fills in our history ? I do 
not propose to answer this question by reviewing 
the history of his time or by retelling his biography. 
Both history and biography contain the answer, yet 
neither is the answer. They are indeed much more, 
for they carry with them, of necessity, everything 
concerning the man, his strength and his weakness, 
his virtues and his defects, all the criticism, all the 
differences of opinion which such a career was sure 
to arouse and which such an influence upon his 
country and upon its thought, upon his own time 
and upon the future, was equally sure to generate. 
There is a place for all this, but not here to-day. 
We do not raise a monument to Webster upon de- 
batable grounds, and thus make it the silent cham- 
pion of one side of a dead controversy. We do not 
set up his statue because he changed his early 
opinions upon the tariff, because he remained in 
Tyler's Cabinet after that President's quarrel with 
the Whigs, or because he made upon the 7th of 
March a speech about which men have differed 
always and probably always will differ. Still less 
do we place here his graven image in memory of 
his failings or his shortcomings. History, with her 
cool hands, will put all these things into her scales 
and mete out her measure with calm, unflinching 
eyes. But this is History's task, not ours, and we 
raise this statue on other grounds. 



112 DANIEL WEBSTER 

" Kot ours to gauge the more or less, 
The will's defect, the blood's excess, 
The earthy humors that oppress 

The radiant mind. 
His greatness, not his littleness, 

Concerns mankind." 

To his greatness, then, we rear this monument. 
In what does that greatness, acknowledged by all, 
unquestioned and undenied by any one, consist ? Is 
it in the fact that he held high office ? He was a 
brilliant Member of Congress ; for nineteen years a 
great Senator ; twice Secretary of State. But " the 
peerage solicited him, not he the peerage." Tenure 
of office is nothing, no matter how high the place. 
A name recorded in the list of holders of high office 
is little better than one writ in water if the office 
holding be all. We do not raise this statue to the 
Member of Congress, to the Senator of the United 
States, or to the Secretary of State, but to Daniel 
Webster. That which concerns us is what he did 
with these great places which were given to him ; 
for to him, as to all others, they were mere oppor- 
tunities. What did he do with these large oppor- 
tunities ? Still more, what did he do with the 
splendid faculties which nature gave him ? In the 
answer lies the greatness which lifts him out of 
the ranks and warrants statues to his memory. 

First, then, of those qualities which he inherited 
from the strong New England stock that gave him 



DANIEL WEBSTER 113 

birth, and which Nature, the fairy who stands by 
every cradle, poured out upon him. How generous, 
how lavish she was to that " infant crying in the 
night, that infant crying for the light" in the rough 
frontier village of New Hampshire a hundred and 
eighteen years ago ! She gave him the strong, un- 
tainted blood of a vigorous race — the English 
Puritans — who in the New World had been for five 
generations fighting the hard battle of existence 
against the wilderness and the savage. His father 
was a high type of this class, a farmer and a fron- 
tiersman, a pioneer and Indian fighter, then a soldier 
of the Revolution. On guard the night of Arnold's 
treason, Washington in that dark hour declared that 
Captain Webster was a man who could be trusted ; 
simple words, but an order of merit higher and more 
precious than any glowing ribbon or shining star. 
So fathered and so descended, the child was endowed 
with physical attributes at once rare and inestimable. 
When developed into manhood he was of command- 
ing stature and seemed always even larger and taller 
than he really was. Strong, massive, and hand- 
some, he stood before his fellow-men looking upon 
them with wonderful eyes, if we may judge from all 
that those who saw him tell us, "Dull anthracite 
furnaces under overhanging brows, waiting only to 
be blown," says Carlyle ; and those deep-set, glowing 
eyes pursue us still in all that we read of Webster, 



114 DANIEL WEBSTER 

just as they seemed to haunt every one who looked 
upon them in life. When in a burst of passion or of 
solemn eloquence he fixed his eyes upon his hearers, 
each man in a vast audience felt that the burning 
glance rested upon him alone and that there was no 
escape. Above the eyes were the high, broad brow 
and the great leonine head ; below them the massive 
jaw and the firm mouth " accurately closed." All 
was in keeping. No one could see him and not be 
impressed. The English navvy with his " There 
goes a king," Sydney Smith, who compared Webster 
to " a walking cathedral," and the great Scotchman, 
harsh in judgment and grudging of praise, who set 
him down as a " Parliamentary Hercules," all alike 
felt the subduing force of that personal presence. 
Look upon some of the daguerreotypes taken of him 
in his old age, when the end was near. I think the 
face is one of the most extraordinary, in its dark 
power and tragic sadness, of all the heads which 
any form of human portraiture has preserved. So 
imposing was he that when he rose to speak, even 
on the most unimportant occasions, he looked, as 
Parton says, like " Jupiter in a yellow waistcoat," 
and even if he uttered nothing but commonplaces, or 
if he merely sat still, such was his "might and 
majesty," that all who listened felt that every 
phrase was charged with deep and solemn meaning, 
and all who gazed at him were awed and impressed. 



DANIEL WEBSTER 115 

Add to all this a voice of great compass, with deep 
organ tones, and we have an assemblage of physical 
gifts concentrated in this one man which would have 
sufficed to make even common abilities seem splendid. 
But the abilities were far from common. The in- 
tellect within answered to the outward vesture. 
Very early does it appear, when we hear of " Web- 
ster's boy" lifted upon a stone wall to read or 
recite to the teamsters stopping to water their horses 
near the Webster farm. They were a rough, hardy 
set, but there was something in the child with the 
large dark eyes that held them and made them 
listen. And the father, gallant and quite pathetic 
soul, with a dumb and very manifest love of higher 
things, resolved that this boy should have all the 
advantages which had been denied to himself. Like 
the Scottish peasants, who toiled and moiled and 
pinched and saved that their boy might go to the 
university to cultivate learning on a little oatmeal, 
so with many silent sacrifices Ebenezer Webster sent 
his son to school and college and gave him every op- 
portunity the little State afforded. The boy was not 
slow to make the most of all that was thus opened 
to him. The dormant talents grew and burgeoned 
in the congenial soil. Love of books made him their 
reader and master. Rare powers of memory and of 
acquisition showed themselves ; a strong imagination 
led him to the great makers of verse, and natural 



116 DANIEL WEBSTER 

taste took him to the masters of style, both in Eng- 
lish and Latin. When he passed out of college 
his capacity for work brought him hardly earned pit- 
tances as a school-teacher, and then carried him 
through the toilsome, early stages of the law. As 
he advanced, the eager delight of acquisition was 
succeeded, as is ever the case, by the passionate de- 
sire for expression, and soon the signs come of the 
power of analysis, of the instinct of lucid statement 
at once so clear and so forcible as to amount to dem- 
onstration. We see before us as we study those 
early years the promise of the great master of words 
to whom a whole nation was one day to listen. 

And with all these gifts, physical and mental, pos- 
sibly, but not necessarily, the outcome of them all, 
we see that Webster had that indefinable quality 
which for lack of a better name we call ''charm." 
He exercised a fascination upon men and women 
alike, upon old and young, upon all who came in 
contact with him. When as a boy he returned from 
the country fair, his mother said to him, '•' Daniel, 
what did you do with your quarter?" "Spent it." 
"Ezekiel, what did you do with yours ? " " Lent it 
to Daniel." As with the elder brother then, so it 
was through life. Webster strode along the path- 
way of his great career in solemn state, and there 
were always people about him ready to lend to him 
and to give to him ; not money, merely, but love and 



DANIEL WEBSTER 117 

loyalty and service, ungrudging and unreasoning, 
without either question or hope of reward. A won- 
derful power this, as impalpable as the tints of the 
rainbow, and yet as certain as the sun which paints 
the colors on the clouds and makes all mankind look 
toward them for the bow of hope and promise. 

So he went on and up from the college, the school- 
house, and the country jury, until he stood at the 
head of the American bar before the Supreme Court 
of the nation. On and up he went, from the early 
florid orations of youth until he became the first 
orator of his time, without superior or rival. He 
frightened and disappointed his father by refusing 
the safe harbor of a clerk of court, and strode on- 
ward and upward until he stood at the head of the 
Senate and directed from the State Department the 
foreign policy of his country. Up and on from 
the farmhouse and the schoolhouse, from the stone 
wall whence he read to the rude audience of team- 
sters, to the days when thousands hung upon his 
words, when he created public opinion and shaped 
the political thought of his nation. What a trium- 
phant progress it was, and of it all what now remains 
to make men say fifty years after his death that he 
merits not only a statue but lasting remembrance ? 
Is it to be found in his success as a great advocate 
and lawyer, the acknowledged head of his profession ? 
There is nothing which demands or calls forth greater 



118 DANIEL WEBSTER 

intellectual po\Yers or larger mental resources than 
the highest success at the bar, and yet no reputation 
is more evanescent. The decisions of judges remain 
and become part of the law of the land, lasting 
monuments of the learning and the thought which 
brought them forth. But the arguments which en- 
lightened courts, which swayed juries, upon which 
public attention was fixed in admiration, fade almost 
in the hour, while the brilliant law^^er who uttered 
them soon becomes a tradition and a memory. 

We must look beyond his triumphs at the bar to 
find the Webster of history. Beyond his work as a 
lawmaker, also, for, although he had a lion's share 
in the legislation of his time, it is not as a construc- 
tive statesman that he lives for us to-day. In the 
first rank as a lawmaker and as a lawyer, something 
very great must remain behind if we can readily and 
justly set aside such claims as these and say the 
highest remembrance rests on other grounds. Yet 
such is the case ; and the first, but the lesser, of these 
other grounds is his power of speech. Eminent as a 
legislator, still more distinguished as a lawyer, Web- 
ster was supreme as an orator. I had occasion some 
years ago to make a very careful study of Webster's 
speeches and orations. I read with them, and in 
strict comparison, all that was best in Greek, Latin, 
French, and English oratory, and all that is best and 
finest — I do not say all that is fine and good — is to 



DANIEL WEBSTER 119 

be found in those four languages. Webster stood 
the comparison without need of deduction or 
apology. I do not think that I am influenced by 
national feeling, for my object was to exclude the 
historical as well as the personal valuation, and to 
reach a real estimate. When all was done, it seemed 
to me that Webster was unequalled. I am sure that 
he is unsurpassed as an orator. There was no need 
for him to put pebbles in his mouth to cure stammer- 
ing, or to rehearse his speeches on the seashore in 
conflict with the noise of the waves. He had from 
the hand of nature all the graces of person and 
presence, of voice and delivery, which the most 
exacting critic could demand, and these natural gifts 
were trained, enhanced, and perfected by years of 
practice in the Senate, the court room, and before 
the people. In what he said he always had distinc- 
tion — rarest of qualities — and he had also the 
great manner, just as Milton has it in verse. To 
lucid statement, to that simplicity in discussion 
which modern times demand for practical questions, 
to nervous force, he added, at his best, wealth of 
imagery, richness of diction, humor, and pathos, all 
combined with the power of soaring on easy wing to 
the loftiest flights of eloquence. Above all, he had 
that highest quality, the " a-irovBaiOTrjv " or high 
and excellent seriousness which Aristotle sets down 
as one of the supreme virtues of poetry and with- 



120 DANIEL WEBSTER 

out which neither oratory nor poetry can attain 
supremacy. 

Charles Fox was the author of the famous apho- 
rism that " no good speech ever read well." This is 
the declaration in epigrammatic form that the speech 
which is prepared like an essay and read or recited, 
which, in other words, is literature before it is 
oratory, is not thoroughly good ; and of the sound- 
ness of the doctrine there can be, I think, no doubt. 
But this proposition is not without its dangers. 
Charles Fox lived up to his own principle. He was, 
in my opinion, the greatest of English orators at the 
moment of speech, but he is little read and seldom 
quoted now. What he said has faded from the 
minds of men despite its enchanting, its enormous 
effect at the moment. On the other hand, the 
speech which is literature before it is spoken is 
ineffective or only partially effective at the moment, 
and if it is read afterwards, however much we may 
enjoy the essay, we never mistake it for the genuine 
eloquence of the spoken word. Macaulay is an ex- 
ample of this latter class, as Fox is of the former. 
Macaulay's speeches are essays, eloquent and rhetor- 
ical, but still essays ; literature, and not speeches. He 
was listened to with interest and delight, but he was 
not a great parliamentary debater or speaker. The 
highest oratory, therefore, must combine in exact 
balance the living force and freshness of the spoken 



DANIEL WEBSTER 121 

word with the literary qualities which alone ensure 
endurance. The best examples of this perfection 
are to be found in the world of imagination, in the 
two speeches of Brutus and Mark Antony in the 
play of Julius Csesar. They are speeches and 
nothing else, — one cool, stately, reasonable; the 
other a passionate, revolutionary appeal, hot from 
the heart and pouring from the lips with unpremedi- 
tated art, and yet they both have the literary 
quality, absolutely supreme in this instance, because 
Shakespeare wrote them.' 

It is not the preparation or even the writing out 
beforehand, therefore, which makes a speech into an 
essay, for these things can both be done without 
detracting from the spontaneity, without dulling the 
sound of the voice which the wholly great speech 
must have, even on the printed page. The speech 
loses when the literary quality becomes predominant, 
and absolute success as high as it is rare comes only 
from the nice balance of the two essential ingredients. 
You find this balance, this combination, in Demos- 
thenes and Isocrates, although I venture to think 
that those two great masters lean, if at all, too much 
to the literary side. In Cicero, although in matter 
and manner the best judges would rank him below 
the Greek masters, the combination is quite perfect. 
One of his most famous speeches, it is said, was 
never delivered at all, and none the less it is a 



l22 DANIEL WEBSTER 

speech and nothing else, instinct with life and yet 
with the impalpable literary feeling all through it, 
the perfect production of a very beautiful and subtle 
art. Among English orators Burke undoubtedly 
comes nearest to the union of the two qualities, and 
while the words of Fox and Pitt remain unread and 
unquoted, except by students, Burke's gorgeous sen- 
tences are recited and repeated by successive genera- 
tions. Yet there is no doubt that Burke erred on 
the literary side, and we find the proof of it in the 
fact that he often spoke to empty benches, and that 
Goldsmith could say of him : 

' ' Too deep for his hearers still went on refining, 
And thought of convincing while they thought of dining." 

Burke was a literary man as well as an orator 
and a statesman. Webster was not a literary man 
at all. He never wrote books or essays, although, in 
Dr. Johnson's phrase, he had literature and loved it. 
He was an orator, pure and simple ; his speeches, 
good, bad, or indifferent, are speeches — never essays 
or anything but speeches — and yet upon all alike 
is the literary touch. In all is the fine literary 
quality, always felt, never seen, ever present, never 
obtrusive. He had the combination of Shakespeare's 
Brutus or Antony, of Demosthenes or Cicero, and 
when he rose to his greatest heights he reached 
a place beyond the fear of rivalry. 

Would you have a practical proof and exhibition 



DANIEL WEBSTER 123 

of this fact, turn to any serious and large debate 
in Congress, and you will find Webster continually 
quoted, as he is in every session, quoted twenty 
times as often as any other public man in our his- 
tory. He said many profound, many luminous, many 
suggestive things ; he was an authority on many 
policies and on the interpretation of the Constitu- 
tion. But there had been others of whom all this 
might be said ; there were kings before Agamemnon, 
but they are rarely quoted, while Webster is quoted 
constantly. He had strong competitors in his own 
day and in his own field, able, acute, and brilliant 
men. He rose superior to them, I think, in his life- 
time, but now that they are all dead Webster is 
familiar to hundreds to whom his rivals are little 
more than names. So far as familiarity in the 
mouths of men goes, it is Eclipse first and the rest 
nowhere. It is the rare combination of speech and 
literature ; it is the literary quality, the literary 
savor, which keeps what Webster said fresh, strong, 
and living. When we open the volumes of his 
speeches it is not like unrolling the wrappings of an 
Egyptian mummy, to find within a dried and shriv- 
elled form, a faint perfume alone surviving to recall 
faintly the vanished days, as when 

" Some queen, long dead, was young." 
Rather it is like the opening of Charlemagne's tomb, 
when his imperial successor started back before the 



124 DANIEL WEBSTER 

enthroned figure of the great emperor looking out 
upon him, instinct with life under the red glare of 
the torches. 

Let us apply another and surer test. How many 
speeches to a jury in a criminal trial possessing 
neither political nor public interest survive in fresh 
remembrance seventy years after their delivery? 
I confess I can think of no jury speeches of any 
kind which stand this ordeal except, in a limited 
way, some speeches of Erskine, and those all have 
the advantage of historical significance, dealing as 
they do with constitutional and political questions 
of great moment. But there is one of Webster's 
speeches to a jury which lives to-day, and no more 
crucial test could be applied than the accomplishment 
of such a feat. The White murder case was simply a 
criminal trial, without a vestige of historical, polit- 
ical, or general public interest. Yet Webster's speech 
for the prosecution has been read and recited until 
wellnigh hackneyed. It is in readers and manuals, 
and is still declaimed by schoolboys. Some of its 
phrases are familiar quotations and have passed into 
general speech. Let me recall a single passage : 

" He has done the murder. No eye has seen him ; 
no ear has heard him. The secret is his own, and 
it is safe. 

"Ah, gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. 
Such a secret can be safe nowhere. The whole 



DANIEL WEBSTER 125 

creation of God has neither nook nor corner where 
the guilty can bestow it and say it is safe. ... A 
thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, 
everything, every circumstance connected with the 
time and place ; a thousand ears catch every whis- 
per; a thousand excited minds intensely dwell on 
the scene, shedding all their light, and ready to 
kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of 
discovery. Meantime the guilty soul cannot keep 
its own secret. It is false to itself; or, rather, it 
feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true 
to itself. It labors under its guilty possession, and 
knows not what to do with it. The human heart 
was not made for the residence of such an inhab- 
itant. It finds itself preyed on by a torment which 
it dares not acknowledge to God or man. A vulture 
is devouring it, and it can ask no sympathy or assist- 
ance either from heaven or earth. The secret which 
the murderer possesses soon comes to possess him, 
and, like the evil spirits of which we read, it over- 
comes him and leads him whithersoever it will. 
He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, 
and demanding disclosure. He thinks the whole 
world sees it in his face, reads it in his eyes, and 
almost hears its workings in the very silence of his 
thoughts. It has become his master. It betrays his 
discretion, it breaks down his courage, it conquers 
his prudence. "When suspicions from without begin 



126 DANIEL WEBSTER 

to embarrass him and the net of circumstance to 
entangle him, the fatal secret struggles with still 
greater violence to burst forth. It must be con- 
fessed; it will be confessed. There is no refuge 
from confession but suicide, and suicide is con- 
fession." 

Those are words spoken to men, not written for 
them. It is a speech and nothing else, and yet we 
feel all through it the literary value and quality which 
make it imperishable. Take another example. When 
Webster stood one summer morning on the ramparts 
of Quebec and heard the sound of drums and saw 
the English troops on parade, the thought of Eng- 
land's vast world empire came strongly to his mind. 
The thought was very natural under the circum- 
stances, not at all remarkable nor in the least 
original. Some years later, in a speech in the Sen- 
ate, he put his thought into words, and this, as 
every one knows, is the way he did it : ''A power 
which has dotted over the surface of the whole 
globe with her possessions and military posts, whose 
morning drum-beat, following the sun and keeping 
company with the hours, circles the earth with one 
continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs 
of England." 

The sentence has followed the drum-beat round 
the world and has been repeated in England and in 
the antipodes by men who never heard of Webster 



DANIEL WEBSTER 127 

and probably did not know that this splendid de- 
scription of the British Empire was due to an 
American. It is not the thought which has carried 
these words so far through time and space. It is 
the beauty of the imagery and the magic of the 
style. Let me take one more very simple example 
of the quality which distinguishes Webster's speeches 
above those of others, which makes his words and 
serious thoughts live on when others, equally weighty 
and serious, perhaps, sleep or die. In his first 
Bunker Hill oration he apostrophized the monu- 
ment, just as any one else might have tried to do, 
and this is what he said : " Let it rise, let it rise 
till it meet the sun in his coming; let the earliest 
light of morning gild it, and parting day linger and 
play on its summit." 

Here the thought is nothing, the style every- 
thing. No one can repeat those words and be deaf 
to their music or insensible to the rhythm and 
beauty of the prose with the Saxon words relieved 
just sufficiently by the Latin derivatives. The ease 
with which it is done may be due to training, but 
the ability to do it comes from natural gifts which, 
as Goethe says, '^ we value more as we get older 
because they cannot be stuck on." Possibly to 
some people it may seem very simple to utter such a 
sentence as I have quoted. To them I can only 
repeat what Scott says somewhere about Swift's 



128 DANIEL WEBSTER 

style, perhaps the purest and strongest we have in 
the language. " Swift's style," said Scott, " seems 
so simple that one would think any child might 
write like him, and yet if we try we find to our 
despair that it is impossible." 

Such, then, were the qualities which in their per- 
fect combination put Webster among the very few 
who stand forth as the world's greatest orators. In 
this age of ours when the tendency is to overpraise 
commonplace work, to mistake notoriety for fame 
and advertisement for reputation, it is of inestimable 
worth to a people to have as one of their own pos- 
sessions such a master of speech, such a standard of 
distinction and of real excellence as we find in 
Webster. Such an orator deserves a statue. 

But there is yet another ground, deeper and more 
serious than this. Webster deserves a statue for 
what he represented, for the message he delivered, 
and for that for which he still stands and will 
always stand before his countrymen and in the cold, 
clear light of history. He was born just at the end 
of the war of the Revolution, when the country was 
entering upon the period of disintegration and impo- 
tence known as that of the Confederation. He was 
too young to understand and to feel those bitter 
years of struggle and decline which culminated in 
the adoption of the Constitution. But the first 
impressions of his boyhood must have been of the 



DANIEL WEBSTER 129 

prosperity, strength, and honor which came from 
the new instrument of government and from the 
better union of the States. His father followed his 
old chief in politics as he had in the field, and Web- 
ster grew up a Federalist, a supporter of Washing- 
ton, Hamilton, and Adams, and of the leaders of 
their party. As he came to manhood he saw the 
first assault upon the national principle in the Vir- 
ginia and Kentucky resolutions. He had entered 
public life when the second attack came in the 
movement which ended with the Hartford conven- 
tion, and with which, New England Federalist as he 
was, he could feel no sympathy. Again fifteen 
years passed and the third assault was delivered in 
the nullification doctrines of South Carolina. 

Webster was then at the zenith of his powers, and 
he came forward as the defender of the Constitution. 
In the reply to Hayne he reached the highest point 
in parliamentary oratory and left all rivals far be- 
hind. He argued his case with consummate skill, both 
legally and historically. But he did far more than 
this. He was not merely the great orator defending 
the Constitution, he was the champion of the national 
principle. Whether the Constitution was at the out- 
set an experiment or not, whether it was a contract 
from which each or all of the signatories could with- 
draw at will, was secondary. The great fact was 
that the Constitution had done its work. It had 



130 DANIEL WEBSTER 

made a nation. Webster stood forth in the Senate 
and before the country as the exponent of that fact 
and as the defender of the nation's life against the at- 
tacks of separatism. This was his message to his 
time. This was his true mission. In that cause he 
spoke as none had ever spoken before and with a 
splendor of eloquence and a force of argument to 
which no one else could attain. 

It is not to be supposed for an instant that Web- 
ster discovered the fact that the Constitution had 
made a nation or that he first and alone proclaimed 
a new creed to an unthinking generation. His ser- 
vice was equally great, but widely different from this. 
The great mass of the American people felt dumbly, 
dimly perhaps, but none the less deeply and surely, 
that they had made a nation some day to be a great 
nation, and they meant to remain such and not sink 
into divided and petty republics. This profound feel- 
ing of the popular heart Webster not only represented, 
but put into words. No slight service this, if rightly 
considered ; no little marvel this capacity to change 
thought into speech, to give expression to the feelings 
and hopes of a people and crystallize them forever in 
words fit for such a use. To this power, indeed, we 
owe a large part of the world's greatest literature. 
The myths and legends of Greece were of no one 
man's invention. They were children of the popular 
imaginings — vague, varying — floating hither and 



DANIEL WEBSTER 131 

thither, like the mists of the mountains. But Homer 
touched them, and they started up into a beautiful, 
immortal life to delight and charm untold generations, 
^schylus and Sophocles put them upon the stage, and 
they became types of the sorrows of humanity and of 
the struggle of man with fate. The Sagas of the far 
north, confused and diffuse but full of poetry and 
imagination, slumbered until the Minnesingers wove 
them into the Niebelungen Lied, and again until a 
great composer set them before our eyes, so that all 
men could see their beauty and pathos and read their 
deeper meanings. Sir Thomas Mallory rescued the 
Arthurian legends from chaos, and in our own day a 
great poet has turned them into forms which make 
their beauty clear to the world. Thus popular imag- 
inings, dumb for the most part, finding at best only 
a rude expression, have been touched by the hand of 
genius and live forever. 

So in politics Jefferson embodied in the Declara- 
tion of Independence the feelings of the American 
people and sounded to the world the first note in the 
great march of Democracy, which then began. The 
Marseillaise, in words and music, burned with the 
spirit of the French Revolution and inspired the 
armies which swept over Europe. Thus Webster 
gave form and expression, at once noble and moving, 
to the national sentiment of his people. In what he 
said men saw clearly what they themselves thought, 



132 DANIEL WEBSTER 

but which they could not express. That sentiment 
grew and strengthened with every hour, when men 
had only to repeat his words, in order to proclaim 
the creed in which they believed ; and after he was 
dead Webster was heard again in the deep roar of the 
Union guns from Sumter to Appomattox. His mes- 
sage, delivered as he alone could deliver it, was potent 
in inspiring the American people to the terrible sacri- 
fices by which they saved the nation when he slept 
silent in his grave at Marshfield. Belief in the Union 
and the Constitution, because they meant national 
greatness and national life, was the great dominant 
conviction of Webster's life. It was part of his tem- 
perament. He loved the outer world, the vast ex- 
panses of sea and sky, all that was large and unfettered 
in nature. So he admired great states and empires, 
and had little faith in small ones, or in the happiness 
or worth of a nation which has no history and which 
fears its fate too much to put its fortune to the touch 
when the accepted time has come. 

It was not merely that as a statesman he saw the 
misery and degradation which would come from the 
breaking of the Union as well as the progressive 
disintegration which was sure to follow, but the very 
thought of it came home to him with the sharpness 
of a personal grief which was almost agonizing. 
When, in the 7th of March speech, he cried out, 
" What States are to secede ? What is to remain 



DANIEL WEBSTER 133 

American ? What am I to be ? " a political opponent 
said the tone of the last question made him shudder 
as if some dire calamity was at hand. The great- 
ness of the United States filled his mind. He had 
not the length of days accorded to Lord Bathurst, 
but the angel of dreams had unrolled to him the 
future, and the vision was ever before his eyes. 

This passionate love of his country, this dream of 
her future, inspired his greatest efforts, were even 
the chief cause at the end of his life of his readiness 
to make sacrifices of principle which would only have 
helped forward what he dreaded most, but which he 
believed would save that for which he cared most 
deeply. In a period when great forces were at work 
which in their inevitable conflict threatened the 
existence of the Union of States, Webster stands 
out above all others as the champion, as the very 
embodiment of the national life and the national 
faith. More than any other man of that time he 
called forth the sentiment more potent than all 
reasonings which saved the nation. It was a great 
work, greatly done, with all the resources of a 
powerful intellect and with an eloquence rarely 
heard among men. We may put aside all his other 
achievements, all his other claims to remembrance, 
and inscribe alone upon the base of his statue the 
words uttered in the Senate, "Liberty and Union, 
now and forever, one and inseparable." That single 



134 DANIEL WEBSTER 

sentence recalls all the noble speeches which breathed 
only the greatness of the country and the prophetic 
vision which looked with undazzled gaze into a still 
greater future. No other words are wanted for a 
man who so represented and so expressed the faith 
and hopes of a nation. His statue needs no other 
explanation so long as the nation he served and the 
Union he loved shall last. 



THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 



FREDERIC T. GREENHALGE^ 

The great mystery of death is always the same. 
Whether we behold it under " the canopies of costly 
state," or on the edge of a murky city river, where 
the body of some nameless outcast has been washed 
ashore, we bare our heads and bow in reverence 
before the poor piece of earth ; yesterday humanity, 
to-day in its stillness the visible sign of that over- 
ruling Power which alike guides the universe and 
"doth the ravens feed, yea, providently caters for 
the sparrow." 

Yet there are certain circumstances which heighten 
and sharpen the always solemn lesson of death. 
When a man is cut down in his prime, with all his 
natural force unabated and his power of mind and 
character still widening and strengthening, the blow 

1 Address delivered in Mechanics Hall, Boston, April 18, 1896, on 
the occasion of the public memorial service held by order of the 
Government of the State of Massachusetts in commemoration of the 
life and public services of Frederic T. Greenhalge, late Governor of 
the Commonwealth. 



136 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

strikes ns with peculiar keenness. When that man 
is also the actual representative of the sovereignty 
of the State, to whom have been given authority 
and command, and in whose hands has been placed 
the power to give or withhold liberty and life, his 
death touches the heart and the imagination alike, and 
the lesson of mortality sounds to us in louder and 
deeper tones than ever before. Then come home to 
us the familiar words of the Elizabethan dramatist : 

" The glories of our blood and state 

Are shadows, not substantial things ; 
There is no armor against fate ; 
Death lays his icy hand on kings." 

Such has been the sad experience of Massachusetts 
within the last month. For the first time in seventy 
years, the psalmist's span of human life, the governor 
of the Commonwealth has died in office. He has 
died with all his honors thick upon him, in the 
meridian of his usefulness, beloved and respected 
by all conditions of men. 

The office of governor has always meant a great 
deal to the people of Massachusetts. The early 
colonial tradition of the days when under a trading 
charter the Puritans built up an independent State 
has never been lost. That tradition taught men to 
hold in reverence the head of the State which em- 
bodied for them and for their fathers before them 
the great struggle for religious and political indepen- 



FREDERIC T. GREENHALGE 137 

dence which had brought them to the wilderness. 
Never since that time has the governorship of the 
old State sunk in importance or come to occupy a 
secondary place in the political world. To be gov- 
ernor of Massachusetts has always been regarded by 
the people of the State as one of the highest honors 
to which a Massachusetts man could attain. The 
people of other States have sometimes jested at this 
sentiment of ours, but it is none the less noble and 
wise. It springs from the just State pride which 
we all feel, and has done much to give us the long 
line of distinguished men who have filled the high 
place of our chief magistrate. This sentiment in 
regard to the office encircles our governors with 
respect and honor while they live, and brings us in 
reverence and affection to mourn them when they 
are dead. Thus it is peculiarly fitting that the State 
should show to the memory of a governor who 
died at his post, faithful to the last, the honor in 
which his high office is held by all the people of the 
Commonwealth. 

But there is another and still better reason than 
this for the grief of the State, for the action of the 
official representatives of the people and for these 
services here to-day. The governor, in virtue of his 
high place, is entitled to these honors, but the man 
himself has earned them by his public service, his 
character, and his career, — better titles to the re- 



138 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

spect and sorrow of Massachusetts than any which 
official distinction can ever give. 

The old saying, "Speak naught but good of the 
dead," although sometimes abused and still oftener 
sneered at, is, nevertheless, like many other old 
sayings, founded on the broad and generous sense 
of mankind. Men who make their mark upon their 
time in any way, and especially public men, are 
certain to meet with abundance of censure and mis- 
understanding in the heated struggles of our active, 
energetic life. When they have passed into history, 
when Dr. Johnson's limit of the hundred years neces- 
sary to a right estimate has come and gone, the 
historian in his turn is sure to criticise them again 
with entire coolness, and let us hope with more 
justice than their contemporaries. It is only right, 
therefore, and it is necessary also to that final sum- 
ming up. of history, when friendship and enmity have 
alike paled their fires, that there should be a moment 
in which all that is best in a man's life and work 
should be set forth without deduction, free alike 
from the sharpness of the contemporary critic or the 
cold balancing of the future historian. Such a mo- 
ment comes when we stand beside the hardly closed 
grave, and when grief and affection for the dead are 
uppermost in our hearts. 

It is the fashion to call such utterances at such 
a time eulogy, which, after all, means merely the 



FREDERIC T. GREENHALGE 139 

good word 5 and it is also the fashion to think of 
eulogy as in a large measure conventional and in- 
sincere. But this is, after all, a shallow and a 
narrow view. Rough manners do not necessarily 
mean rugged honesty, although they are sometimes 
employed to convey that idea. Eulogy is more 
likely to be true than invective, and good words than 
bad. Criticism has fallen so much into the evil 
habit of mere fault-finding that it is generally under- 
stood to mean only hostile comment. It is too often 
forgotten that the true function of criticism is to 
point out merits as well as defects, and that the 
highest criticism is that which, unblinded by preju- 
dice and fearless in its blame of error, shows to the 
world what is best in a book or in a man. There- 
fore we meet to-day not to utter the vain common- 
places of perfunctory praise in memory of a man 
who loved truth and hated shams, but to speak of 
him words at once good and true which love and 
sorrow bring naturally to our lips. 

The highest praise we can bestow upon any man 
is to say that the story of his life, of what he said 
and what he did, of what he was and how he took 
part in the life of his time, is his best eulogy. We 
can say this truthfully of our dead governor, and 
it is enough, for that simple statement is in itself 
the full meed of honor. It is in his life that I 
have found his best eulogy, for there his own works 



140 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

praise him better than any words of mine can possi- 
bly do. 

Frederic Thomas Greenhalge was born in CHtheroe, 
county of Lancaster, England, July 19, 1842, the 
only son in a family of seven children of William 
and Jane (Slater) Greenhalge. The father, William 
Greenhalge, was the son of Thomas Greenhalg of 
Burnley. The latter was the son of John Greenhalg, 
who was the son of Thomas Greenhalg, attorney- 
at-law in Preston.. The surname of the Lancaster 
family was apparently spelled without a final "e," 
and is thoroughly and characteristically English. 
William Greenhalge, the father of the governor, is 
described by those who knew him as a man of 
education, and possessed also of much artistic ability. 
Some of the pictures painted by him in early life are 
said to be still preserved in Edenfield, where the 
family lived for a time. About the year 1847 
William Greenhalge joined his brother Thomas as 
a master engraver to calico printers, under the style 
of Greenhalge Bros., their works being situated at 
Stubbins bridge, between Rams Bottom and Eden- 
field. The business, however, did not prosper, and 
in May, 1855, William Greenhalge with his wife 
and family emigrated to America in order to im- 
prove his fortunes, and in pursuance of an engage- 
ment with the Merrimac Printing Company at Lowell 
to take the general management of the engraving 



FREDERIC T. GREENHALGE 141 

department at a salary of four hundred pounds per 
annum, and an increase at the expiration of three 
years. The salary was a high one for those days, 
and it shows beyond all doubt that William Green- 
halge was a man of training and artistic capacity, 
able to take control of the important department 
of design, upon which the success of print works so 
largely depends. 

As soon as he had settled in his new position his 
children were sent to school, and his only son, who 
was evidently a precocious lad, early took high rank 
in his classes. In the high school at Lowell he is re- 
called as the leader of his class and the first winner 
of the Carney medal. He also showed, even at this 
early age, the taste for literature which accompanied 
him through life, by establishing a school review, 
edited and written by the boys, which I believe is 
still continued. As was to be expected, this eager, 
active-minded boy longed for the highest education, 
and in the fall of 1859, after the usual preparation, 
he entered Harvard College. His course there was 
not without distinction. At the close of his sopho- 
more year he was elected orator of the " Institute of 
1770," and subsequently became one of the editors 
of the old Harvard Magazine. 

Love of learning brought him to Harvard through 
much hard work and many sacrifices. But he was 
not a mere bookworm. He had then, as always, 



142 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

that sanest of qualities, — a great love for outdoor 
air and outdoor sports. His fondness for sports, 
indeed, resulted in an accident from which he suffered 
for many years. Those were the days, not of the 
football games which we know and which timid 
people denounce, because now and then some one is 
hurt, but of what were known as football fights, in 
which there was very little football and a great deal 
of fighting. The classes faced each other on the 
Delta with the football between them, and fought. 
It was a rough pastime, in which, in one form or 
another, English-speaking boys have always indulged, 
and which has done the race a great deal of good in 
the long run. The Duke of Wellington, if the familiar 
tradition may be believed, thought that the spirit it 
bred helped him to win the battle of Waterloo. Green- 
halge at all events went in with his fellows because 
he was thoroughly brave and healthy-minded, and 
loved to taste the delight of battle with his peers. 
If he had not had that spirit he would not have been 
the man he was, and it went with him through life. 
He had the ill-luck to be one of those who were 
seriously hurt. In a fall he injured his back and suf- 
fered much from it for some time afterwards, but he 
never complained, and was always glad that he stood 
up in the rough football fight just as he stood up in 
later years with the same spirit in the greater battles 
of professional and public life. 



FREDERIC T. GREENHALGE 143 

He loved his college life in all its phases, but he 
was not destined to complete his course at that time. 
His college career was suddenly interrupted by the 
death of his father in 1862, his junior year at Har- 
vard, and the young student of twenty suddenly 
became the mainstay and sole support of his mother 
and six sisters. Like many another college boy 
brought sharply face to face with the hardest reali- 
ties of life, Greenhalge found temporary employment 
as a school-teacher at Chelmsford. Subsequently he 
was employed in the American bolt shop at Lowell, 
but devoted all his spare time to the study of law 
in the office of Brown & Alger. While he was thus 
meeting the responsibilities thrust upon him, the 
nation was engaged in the mighty struggle of the 
Civil War. To this Mr. Greenhalge could not remain 
indifferent. He had become a thorough American. 
He hated slavery, and love of country was strong 
within him. So he put aside all private interests 
and determined to enter the army. Unfortunately, 
his physical condition at that time, owing to the 
accident in college, was not good, and the examining 
surgeon, to whom he presented himself, rejected him 
with the comment that there were enough " sick 
boys in the hospitals already." Greenhalge's action 
was characteristic of the man. Despite the medical 
verdict, he determined to go to the front, be the cost 
what it might. Accordingly, in October of 1863 he 



144 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

went to Newberne, N. C, and was there placed in 
the commissary department. When the city was 
attacked in February, 1864, he offered his services 
in the defence, and was given a command in a force 
of colored troops. While engaged in that duty he 
was stricken do^vn with malarial fever, and after a 
few weeks' illness was sent home. This was his first 
glimpse of the South, to which a little more than 
thirty years later he was to return on another and 
far different errand, as the governor of Massachusetts, 
bearing a message of fraternity and good-will to a 
sister State. He had thrown his whole energy into 
the Union cause, and the result of his efforts was 
bitterly disappointing. There was a touch of pathos 
in the way he summed up his army experience. " I 
got," he says, '^neither commission, pension, nor 
record, — nothing but malaria." Yet he deserved 
as much credit as men who got all three, for he gave 
all he could. He served wherever he could help his 
country, without a thought of self, and no man can 
do more. 

After his recovery from the illness caused by his 
service in the Union army he renewed his law studies, 
and in 1865 he was admitted to the Middlesex bar, 
entering at once upon the practice of his profession. 
In 1870 he received from Harvard the degree of A.B. 
Two years later he married Miss Nesmith, daughter 
of Lieutenant-Governor John Nesmith, whose name 



FREDERIC T. GREENHALGE 145 

and family have been so long and honorably con- 
nected with the growth and upbuilding of Lowell 
from the earliest days of the city. He was now 
established in life. Happy in his home and his 
marriage, devoted to his children, earnest in the 
pursuit of his profession, he was also respected by 
his fellow townsmen and popular in society, where 
his charm of manner, his wit and humor, his clever- 
ness as an amateur actor, were all appreciated. 

Four years before his marriage he had taken his 
first step in public life. In 1868 he was chosen to 
the common council, and was re-elected the following 
year. He also organized the Grant Campaign Club 
in Lowell, and was its business manager. It has 
been said that Mr. Greenhalge's friends found it 
difficult at first to interest him in active politics, 
although the larger public questions always absorbed 
his attention. How true this may be I do not know, 
but his aptitude for political affairs and his gift of 
eloquent speech were unmistakable, and, once em- 
barked in a political career, he soon became a leader 
in municipal affairs. Such honors and responsibili- 
ties as the city could give came to him in varied 
forms for wellnigh a score of years, and it is evident 
that he early won and never lost a high place in the 
esteem and affection of the people of Lowell. From 
1871 to 1873 he was a member of the school board. 
In 1874 he was made a special justice of the police 

10 



146 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

court at Lowell, and served for ten years, when he 
resigned. In 1879 he was brought forward as a 
candidate for mayor. This was done in the face of 
the opposition of many of the older politicians, who 
feared that he could not develop strength enough 
to beat his opponent, a popular Democratic leader. 
His friends thought otherwise, went vigorously to 
work, and carried Greenhalge delegates in four of 
the six wards. Events justified their wisdom and 
their belief in their candidate, for Mr. Greenhalge 
was elected by a handsome majority, and served 
during the years 1880 and 1881, showing the same 
independence of thought and action which were so 
characteristic of his whole career. During his term 
of office he presided at the memorial exercises held 
on the South Common in memory of President Gar- 
field, and delivered upon that occasion an address 
which was much admired at the time, and which 
added to his growing reputation as a speaker. He 
also drafted the memorial resolutions adopted by the 
city council. In 1881 he was an unsuccessful candi- 
date for State senator. 

Three years later he was elected a delegate from 
the Lowell district to the Republican national con- 
vention at Chicago. It was there that I was first 
brought into close relations with him. I had known 
him before, but only slightly. At Chicago I came to 
know him well, and I have very seldom met any 



FREDERIC T. GREENHALGE 147 

man who attracted me so strongly and so quickly. 
We were fighting a losing fight against the popular 
candidate, because we thought it our duty to do so. 
It was a trying position, and I was at once impressed 
by Mr. Greenhalge's good sense, by his modesty, his 
entire fearlessness, and his indifference to personal 
considerations. What most drew me to him was 
that quick sympathy which was his greatest charm, 
and which was enhanced by his sense of humor, the 
most sympathetic of all qualities. As is well known, 
we were beaten in the convention ; but although the 
contest had been heated and even bitter, Mr. Green- 
halge did not swerve or vary in his loyalty to his 
party, or in the fidelity which we believed simple 
honesty and good faith required us as delegates to 
show to the brilliant leader whom we had opposed 
and whom the convention nominated. As soon as 
he reached home Mr. Greenhalge at once made a 
strong speech in Lowell in support of Mr. Blaine 
and of the Republican party, whose principles and 
policies he believed essential to the welfare and 
prosperity of the country. As he began, so he went 
on, and gave generously, as he always did, of his 
time and strength to upholding and advocating the 
Republican cause. 

In the year following the presidential election he 
was chosen one of the Lowell Representatives to 
the lower branch of the State legislature, where he 



148 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

did excellent service. He was elected, owing to his 
personal popularity, in a Democratic district, but 
was defeated for re-election by one vote. Upon 
the occasion of the semi-centennial of Lowell in 1886 
he delivered the historical address, which added still 
further to his reputation as an orator. In 1888 he 
was chosen city solicitor. 

His successful career in Lowell, together with his 
popularity, his services in the political campaigns, 
and his standing as a public speaker had already 
marked him for higher preferment, and as a man 
fit for a larger field of action. The presidential 
campaign of 1888 at last brought the opportunity, 
and his party in the district turned to him as their 
candidate for Congress. The fight which followed 
his nomination was a stubborn one, but he made an 
aggressive and effective canvass, and was elected 
by a handsome plurality. 

When he resigned his office as city solicitor in 
1889 to go to Washington, the first period of his 
life closed. He was now to enter upon the broader 
field of national politics, and he came to it at a time 
of great stress and excitement. The Fifty-first Con- 
gress was not a peaceful one. It was the second Re- 
publican Congress since the days of Grant, and the 
party majority hung by a slender thread. There was 
a great work to be done, nothing less than the reform 
of the rules and the restoration to the majority of 



FREDERIC T. GREENHALGE 149 

its rights and responsibilities. The opening days 
of the session were marked by much turbulence, and 
all the known tactics of obstructive parliamentary 
warfare were resorted to by a resolute and defiant 
opposition. It was a time which demanded the best 
resources of trained and experienced leadership, and 
there seemed to be but a slight opening for a new 
and untried man. When the House organized and 
the committees were announced, Mr. Greenhalge 
found himself placed on the committees on elections, 
revision of the laws, and reform in the civil service. 
To the first of these committees was intrusted the 
important function of hearing and deciding contests 
for seats, of which there was an unusually large 
number in that Congress, most of them coming 
from Southern States. Party feeling ran high, and 
the debates which followed the various reports on 
election cases provoked great partisan bitterness. 
To the work of this committee Mr. Greenhalge 
devoted himself with his accustomed energy and 
ability. 

The first case to be called up was that of Smith 
V. Jackson, from West Virginia. During this debate 
Mr. Greenhalge made his maiden speech. The occa- 
sion could not have been more happily selected. The 
House was crowded, and the interest was keen. His 
analysis of the legal points involved was lucid and 
convincing, and the whole speech was tinged with 



150 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

a delicious satire which caught the House at once. 
At the close he was accorded hearty and enthusiastic 
applause. The House recognized immediately that 
he was a sound lawyer, a brilliant speaker, and a 
strong debater, and the opinion of the House on 
these points is of the best, and is not easily won. 
It was a triumph for a first speech. Henceforth 
his place was secure, and he became at once one of 
the leaders of the House. His reputation thus made, 
he found himself beset by every contestant with 
demands for assistance. These appeals he found 
it difficult to resist, and he did much effective work 
in placing these election controversies before the 
House. The amount of labor involved in sifting 
evidence in each case was immense, but the reward 
came in the form of an established legal and forensic 
reputation. It is impossible to do more than allude 
to perhaps his most eloquent effort while a member 
of the House, the speech made in the Waddill v. 
Wise Case. Edmund Waddill, Jr., the Republican 
candidate, contested the seat of his Democratic op- 
ponent, who had been given the certificate of election 
from one of the Virginia districts. It was clearly 
shown in the evidence that in three precincts of one 
ward in the city of Richmond long lines of colored 
voters had remained standing in front of the election 
booths throughout the night before election and dur- 
ing the entire election day until the polls were closed, 



FREDERIC T. GREENHALGE 151 

in the vain hope of being allowed to cast their 
ballots. The whole question of the right to the 
seat turned upon whether these ballots should be 
counted. In the course of his speech Mr. Green- 
halge said : 

" Shall the law be ineffectual ? Shall the whole 
majesty of the law stand silent, powerless, inactive 
as yonder obelisk, or shall that law be clothed with 
power and strength enough to give to every man in 
that colored line the same rights that the white 
millionaire has ? Mr. Speaker, I have heard and 
read with admiration of that memorable thin, red 
line which repelled the fiery onset of Napoleon at 
Waterloo ; but I say that this thin, black line, stand- 
ing from sunrise to sunset in Jackson ward, means 
as much for human freedom and civil liberty as the 
memorable thin, red line at Waterloo. I go further, 
Mr. Speaker : I say that if this House does not do 
justice to every man in those lines in the first, third, 
and fourth precincts of Jackson ward, in the city of 
Richmond, and count every vote there legally ten- 
dered, then the flaming lines of Gettysburg were 
nothing more than a vain and empty show, and even 
the grand words of Lincoln, spoken over the graves 
of Gettysburg, become only as ^ sounding brass and 
tinkling cymbals.' " 

The wave of popular discontent which engulfed 
the party in power in 1890 carried Mr. Greenhalge 



152 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

down with it, despite his personal popularity, and 
owing to his neglect of his own interests by going 
out of his district to give generous aid to other 
Republicans. He made a gallant fight, but was de- 
feated by about four hundred and fifty votes. If his 
disappointment was acute at thus finding himself un- 
expectedly thrust back on the threshold of a brilliant 
congressional career, no sign of it escaped him. He 
returned cheerfully to the practice of his profession, 
and there is no doubt that for a time he regarded his 
public life as closed. As early as April, 1892, in a 
letter to the chairman of the congressional committee, 
he declined to have his name considered as a candi- 
date for Congress in the approaching canvas. 

The unlooked-for and accidental defeat of the Re- 
publican nominee for governor in 1892 made the 
selection of a new candidate probable in the succeed- 
ing year. Several gentlemen were put forward, and 
during the summer months of 1893 a friendly and 
earnest contest was waged for the nomination. Some 
time before the convention assembled, however, it 
became apparent that Mr. Greenhalge was the popu- 
lar choice, and the other candidates withdrew. The 
incidents of the campaign that followed are still 
fresh in the public mind. After a canvas of great 
brilliancy, Mr. Greenhalge was triumphantly elected, 
thus restoring the line of Republican governors, 
which had been broken for the longest period in the 



FREDERIC T. GREENHALGE 153 

history of the party since it had been dominant in 
Massachusetts, and on January 4, 1894, he was in- 
augurated. In the fall of 1894 and again in 1895 
he was re-elected by heavy majorities, the largest 
which had been cast for any governor in almost a 
generation. When he first received the nomination, 
he told the convention that he accepted it as the 
greatest responsibility of his life, and his subsequent 
career showed that this feeling never left him for an 
instant. Throughout his administration he did his 
duty as he conceived it, without regard to his per- 
sonal interests or to the effect of his acts upon his 
own political fortunes. He may have made mistakes ; 
every successful man who does things worth doing is 
sure to err at times, and he would have been the last 
man to claim infallibility, for he was too human and 
too manly ; but he never acted from a mean or low 
motive, and he had a quick and sound judgment. He 
decided each question as it was presented to him in- 
dependently and fearlessly, not infrequently against 
the advice and judgment of some of his warm 
supporters. 

He had entire courage, physical and moral. Early 
in his first term a mob entered tlie State House. 
They had done no harm, but they were in that un- 
controlled condition when serious danger was likely 
to spring up in an instant. A mass of human beings 
stricken with panic or gathered in a mob, excited and 



154 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

leaderless, is always a peril. When the governor 
heard that this crowd was in the State House and 
menacing the legislature, he did not stop to consider 
what should be done, but went out at once and looked 
disorder so squarely in the face that quiet was re- 
stored. This was the quick instinct of the high- 
spirited man, w^hen the sudden pressure comes, — the 
two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage which Napoleon 
admired. Governor Greenhalge sent no one ; he went 
himself to meet the peril, if there was one, and at his 
coming the danger faded and fled. 

Courage of a different kind he had also, — that 
moral courage which makes a decision among con- 
fl.icting interests, and after careful consideration, 
as he showed on various occasions. He did not 
shrink from putting his veto upon a measure which 
had a powerful interest or a popular cry behind it, 
whenever he thought his duty to the State required 
it; the State sustained him, and even the people, 
whom he disappointed, in the end respected and 
trusted him more. He was not opinionated, but for 
none of his more important acts, when he came to 
review them dispassionately, did he experience any 
regret. He was justly conscious of his purity of 
motive, and the apologetic attitude was one he never 
assumed. A conspicuous instance of this trait ap- 
peared the last time he faced a Republican conven- 
tion. He alluded to several strictures which had 



FREDERIC T. GREENHALGE 155 

been passed upon him, and then with an outburst of 
deep feeling he closed a brief reference to his course 
in office by saying to the delegates who had just 
nominated him for the third term, " In the language 
of the great reformer, so help me God, I could not do 
otherwise." 

He was diligent and industrious in his daily work, 
and never shirked details. With the growth of the 
State the labors of the Executive have multiplied, 
and Governor Greenhalge discharged them all con- 
scientiously and faitlifuUy. The work now incident 
to the office, the work really due to the public, is 
enough to tax sufficiently the strength and ability of 
any man. But insensibly there has grown up the 
habit of expecting the governor of Massachusetts to 
be present and to speak at all sorts of gatherings 
and on all kinds of occasions, wholly unofficial and 
in no sense properly pertaining to the office. These 
incessant demands Governor Greenhalge met with 
the generosity which was so marked a quality of his 
character. But the demands ought never to have 
been made or complied with, for they put upon 
him such a burden and so strained both body and 
mind that at last his health gave way. At first the 
illness seemed trifling. Then with a terrible shock 
we heard that he was dying, and in a few days the 
end came. He died in his prime, worn out in the 
public service, and the people of a great American 



156 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

Commonwealth watched with loving sympathy over 
his last hours, and mourned beside his grave, near 
the busy city which he loved, and to which he had 
come, a little boy of English birth, forty years before. 
So this honorable life of work and conflict, of 
happiness and success, closed. The first thought 
that comes to me as I look back over the record, is 
the strong race quality shown by Governor Green- 
halge. He was born in England. He was of ancient 
English stock, formed by the mingling of Saxon and 
Dane many years before the " galloping Norman 
came." He was thirteen years old when he came to 
Lowell, and all the strong associations of his childhood 
belonged to England. Yet no better, no more thorough 
American ever lived than he. There was no foreign 
prefix and no hyphen attached to his Americanism. 
He received his education here; he absorbed the 
spirit of our life ; he was full of patriotism ; he was 
for America against the world. The fact is, he came 
from the old home of the English-speaking people, 
to find here the larger part of that people as it 
exists to-day ; and in both branches the great race 
qualities, forged and welded through more than a 
thousand years of toil and strife, are the same. 
The differences are superficial, the identities pro- 
found. To a man like Governor Greenhalge, the 
ideas, the beliefs, the habits, the aspirations of the 
great American democracy appealed more strongly 



FREDERIC T. GREENHALGE 157 

than those of the land he had left. The air of 
America was more native to him than that of the 
country of his birth. So he became and lived and 
died an American in every fibre of his being, some- 
thing always worthy of remembrance among a people 
proud of their country and believing in its destiny. 

One reason for his Americanism was that he was 
democratic in the true sense, cringing to no man, 
courteous to all. He was simple in his life, devoted 
and tender to wife and children, a lover of home, — 
the altar and shrine of the race who read the Bible 
in the language of Shakespeare. He was brave and 
loyal, — loyal with that chivalrous loyalty which is 
not too common, but which leads a man like him to 
come unasked to the aid of a friend, and to give and 
take blows in a friend's behalf, as the Black Knight 
came to the side of Ivanhoe when he was sore beset. 

He was honest in word and deed, and untouched by 
the unwholesome passion for mere money, which is 
one of the darkest perils of these modern times. He 
loved literature and books with a real love and rever- 
ence, and held scholarship in honor, as it has always 
been held in New England, and I trust ever will be. 

Of his qualities and gifts as a public man there is 
little need for me to speak. They are known to you 
all, and are fresh in your remembrance. The echoes 
of that ready speech, now flashing with humor and 
satire, now rich in eloquence and feeling, in imagery 



158 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

and allusion, still sound in our ears. With memory 
sharpened by sorrow, we all recall his ability in ad- 
ministration, his capacity for business, his unfailing 
charm of manner, his simple but strong religious 
faith, and his large and generous tolerance. These 
qualities were known and honored of all men, and 
they had their reward, not in the high offices which 
came to him, but in the confidence and affection 
which he inspired. 

His was a life worth living. He made it so both 
for himself and for others. He did a man's work, 
he fought a man's fight, he made his mark upon his 
time. It is a life worth studying, not merely because 
it was an example of the rise from small beginnings 
to great conclusions, which it is one of the glories 
of our country to make possible for all men, but 
because it was a life of lofty aims, of high hopes, 
of honorable achievement. He has left us a fine 
and gracious memory, to be treasured in the history 
of the eld State he served so well; and let this 
thought mingle with our sadness and linger longest 
in our memories. Let us end as we began, with the 
Elizabethan poet, no longer stern, but in a softer, 
tenderer strain. Let us not forget that if 
" The garlands wither on our brow," 

it is also true that 

" The actions of the just 
Smell sweet and blossom in the dust." 



THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

II 

GEOEGE D. KOBINSON^ 

Yesterday we had a memorial service in Boston 
for our Governor who had died in office. To-day we 
meet to do like honor to one of his near predecessors. 
The quick succession of these solemn observances is 
a sad reminder of the loss which has within a few 
months befallen the Commonwealth in the sudden 
death of two of her most trusted and eminent public 
men. Both deserved well of the Republic, both 
had done the State high service, both had lived 
lives and shown qualities which were an honor to 
Massachusetts. 

He whose memory we would recall, and whose 
life and deeds we would praise here to-day, had 
withdrawn himself some years ago from the public 
career in which he had played such a distinguished 
part. He had returned to the active and successful 

1 An address delivered at a meeting in memory of George Dexter 
Robinson, Governor of Massachusetts, 1884-1887, held in Lexington, 
Massachusetts, his native town, on the one hundred and twenty-first 
anniversary of the battle with the British at that place. 



160 tiirp:e governors of Massachusetts 

pursuit of liis profession, where he held a deservedly 
high position. He was cut down suddenly in the 
fulness of his strength, both of body and mind; 
and the news of his death brought deep sorrow to 
all the people of the State. His loss was as keenly 
felt as if he had still held office; for, although he 
had retired from public life, the services he had 
rendered, his high reputation, and his strong char- 
acter made him in any sphere or in any field of 
human activity a potent influence and a pillar of 
strength to the community in which he lived. 

There is a peculiar fitness in coming here on this 
day to honor his memory. Not only is this the town 
of his birth, but it is a famous and historic spot. 
Lexington is a name known to all Americans. When 
we tell the story of the long, brave struggle which 
made us an independent nation, we begin it here 
where for the first time the minute-men faced the 
soldiers of England. With it are entwined all 
the memories of the Revolution. It was to Lex- 
ington and Concord and Bunker Hill that Daniel 
Webster pointed first when he numbered the glories 
of Massachusetts. Here the memories dearest to 
our hearts awaken, and they are all American. 
They speak of American liberty, American courage, 
American union and independence. There is no 
jarring note anywhere. Hence the peculiar fitness 
of which I have spoken in our coming here to com- 



GEORGE D. ROBINSON 161 

memorate the life and services of Governor Robinson ; 
for he was not only a distinguished man, but he was 
a typical one. 

He was a true son of the soil, an American, a New 
Englander. Here the Puritans settled, here they 
lived for generations, here their descendants fought 
the first fight of the Revolution; and here, if any- 
where, in this historic American town we can learn 
from the life of one of its children what the result 
has been of the beliefs, the strivings, the traditions, 
of the people who founded and built up New Eng- 
land, and in the course of the centuries have pushed 
their way across the continent. In the career and 
the character of Governor Robinson we have an 
open book, where we can read a story which will 
tell us what kind of man the civilization of the 
English Puritans has been able to produce in this 
nineteenth century, after so many years of growth 
and battle in the New World. Has the result been 
worthy of the effort and the struggle ? Has the race 
advanced and grown stronger here under new in- 
fluences in its two hundred and fifty years of Ameri- 
can existence, or has it faltered, failed, and declined ? 
These are questions of deep moment to us, children 
of New England and Massachusetts. Let us turn 
to the life of the man whose memory brings us here 
to-day, and find the answer there. 

One of the earliest of the Puritan settlements was 
11 



162 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

at Cambridge ; and there a town sprang up with its 
church and school-house, and in a short time with 
the little college which has grown since then into 
the great university we know to-day. As the years 
went by, more and more land was taken up ; and a 
new settlement was formed to the north of the 
college town, and known as Cambridge Farms. 
Thither about 1706 came Jonathan Robinson with 
his young wife, Ruth. He was born in 1682, the 
son of William Robinson, of Cambridge, was a weaver 
by trade, and moved from his birthplace that he 
might get a farm and establish a home for his 
family. He became one of the leading men of the 
little settlement, was chosen a tythingman in 1735, 
and in 1744 was one of the committee appointed 
to " dignify and seat ye meeting-house," an important 
social function in the early days of New England. 

He had six children. The eldest, Jonathan, born 
in 1707, married in his turn, and had a son named 
Jacob, born in 1739. His son, also named Jacob, the 
great-grandson of the Cambridge weaver, was born 
in 1762. He lived to a great age, and was in his 
turn a leader in the town, being selectman in 1805 
and 1806, and for several years assessor. He had 
nine children, among them Hannah, who became the 
wife of Charles Tufts, the founder of Tufts College, 
and Charles, the father of George D. Robinson, the 
future governor, who was born January 20, 1834. 



GEORGE D. ROBINSON 163 

The mother of Governor Robinson was Mary Davis, 
of Concord, a lineal descendant of Dolor Davis, one 
of the earliest of the Plymouth settlers, and the an- 
cestor of three Massachusetts governors. The mother 
of Mrs. Robinson was the daughter of Joseph Hos- 
mer, who acted as adjutant in the fight at Concord 
Bridge. 

I have traced this pedigree in some detail, not be- 
cause it is remarkable, but because it is typical. It 
is characteristic of New England, and represents the 
rank and file — the yeomanry of Massachusetts — 
who have made the State and done so much to build 
the nation. How plainly they come before us, — 
these men and women of the unmixed Puritan stock ! 
They were a simple, hard-working folk, tilling the 
ground, weaving their linen, bringing up their chil- 
dren in the fear of God, governing themselves, filling 
in their turn the town offices ; while they never lost 
their hold on higher things, respecting and seeking 
education, deeply religious, and with an abiding love 
of home and country. One of the Robinson name 
was in Captain Parker's company on the 19th of 
April at Lexington, and on the mother's side we find 
one of the officers at Concord. These Puritans came 
here at the outset to hear a sermon after their own 
fashion. They were stern and often intolerant, but 
always strong, determined men. As the generations 
passed, each doing its simple duty in thorough man- 



164 thrp:e governors of Massachusetts 

ner, the Puritan severity softened and mellowed ; but 
the great qualities of the race remained unchanged, 
and never failed in war or peace. 

From such ancestry did George Robinson come, 
and such were the traditions he inherited. His 
father was a farmer, a man respected in the town, of 
which he was many times selectman. The boy was 
brought up to the hard but vigorous life of a New Eng- 
land country town. His father's farm lay some two 
miles to the north of Lexington, in what was then a 
somewhat secluded spot. Here the boy soon began to 
bear his share of the responsibilities, and to help in 
the support of the family. There was a great deal of 
hard work on the farm, few leisure hours, not many 
books to read, and, as the nearest neighbor was 
nearly half a mile away, not much society. But 
among the New England ers, as among the lowland 
Scotch, the two branches of the English-speaking 
race which have perhaps contended with harder con- 
ditions than any others, there was an ardent love of 
learning and a belief in the power and the value of 
education, for which no sacrifice was deemed too 
great. 

So, while George Robinson helped his father on the 
farm, he managed to attend the district school for 
three or four months in the year. He did well at 
school, and one who knew him all his life says of 
him : " What he was as a man, he was as a boy, — 



GEORGE D. ROBINSON 165 

truthful, sincere, kind, and clean, — a boy whom 
every one respected and esteemed, making friends 
wherever he went." The means at the command of 
his family were so slender that he put aside the idea 
of ever getting to college ; but, toward the close of 
his career in the more advanced schools, his teachers, 
who had a high opinion of his capacity, persuaded 
him to take the Harvard examinations. He passed 
successfully, and entered college in 1852. It was a 
hard struggle, and required many sacrifices. He 
went back and forth every day from his home in 
Lexington to his recitations in Cambridge. He lived 
on a pittance, earned money by teaching school, and 
by his rigid economy and self-denial completed his 
college course, and was graduated with his class in 
1856. He took good rank at Harvard, graduating 
high enough to win a place in the Phi Beta Kappa. 
He was popular in his class, and a member of several 
societies. One of his classmates, Judge Smith, says 
of him : " Whatever he undertook, he did well and 
so thoroughly that he did not have to go over it a 
second time. I should say that he never hurried, 
and yet was always upon time. I do not believe he 
ever lost any time or strength in worrying. He did 
his best, and then calmly awaited results." 

Thus he found himself face to face with the world 
at the age of twenty-two, with no capital except his 
education, his good brains, and his determined will. 



166 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

His plan at that time seems to have been to study 
medicine ; but, for immediate support, he took to 
teaching, obtaining a position as principal of the 
Chicopee High School, where he remained for nine 
years. During this period he seems to have kept up 
his studies of medicine. Meantime, on November 
24, 1859, he had married ; but in 1864 his wife died, 
and he soon after returned to his father's house, 
bringing with him his only child, a boy of four years. 
It was at this time that he changed his plans, and 
began the serious study of the law in the office of his 
brother. In 1866 he was admitted to the bar, ten 
years after his graduation. He was thirty-two years 
of age, and had come very late to the opening of his 
professional career. Once started, however, he made 
rapid progress. He returned to Chicopee, and opened 
an office in Cabot Hall Block on Market Square, a 
place which he retained until his comparatively re- 
cent removal to Springfield. The thoroughness and 
painstaking care with which he prepared his cases 
soon brought him a lucrative practice in a community 
where he was already so well known and so favorably 
regarded. Soon after he had established himself in 
his profession, on July 11, 1867, he again married, 
his second wife being the daughter of Joseph F. 
Simonds, of Lexington. 

He had always taken an interest in all public 
questions ; but as he had been late in coming to tlie 



GEORGE D. ROBINSON 167 

bar, so he was slow in engaging in active politics. 
His public career began with his election to the 
lower branch of the legislature as the representative 
from Chicopee in the fall of 1874. He was at that 
time forty years of age, and accepted the office with 
genuine reluctance. In his one year of service in the 
House he was placed on the Judiciary Committee, 
serving on that committee side by side with Richard 
Olney, Chief Justice Mason of the Superior Court, the 
late William W. Rice, John Quincy Adams, and Con- 
gressman William S. Knox. The next year he went 
to the State Senate, where he also served one term, 
as he had done in the lower branch. During his two 
years of experience in the State legislature he quickly 
took high rank as a debater, and showed qualifications 
for public life which marked him for larger opportuni- 
ties. They were not long in coming. In the fall of 
1876 he was nominated as the Republican candidate 
for Congress in the old Eleventh District, so long and 
ably represented by Henry L. Dawes, which two 
years before had been carried by Chester W. Chapin, 
the Democratic nominee, by a plurality of nearly 
6,000. Mr. Robinson took the stump at once, and 
after a vigorous struggle overcame the large adverse 
majority, and was elected to the Forty-fifth Congress 
by a plurality of 2,162. He was successively re- 
elected, without serious opposition, to the Forty- 
sixth, Forty-seventh, and Forty-eighth Congresses. 



168 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

He brought to his new duties in Congress the 
trciined habits of a student of political affairs, boldness 
in debate, ingenuity, resource, and a power of forcible 
and lucid statement, which soon commanded the at- 
tention of the House. Before the expiration of his 
first session his close attention to the duties of his 
position both in the committee room and on the floor 
of the House made the late Speaker Randall, a good 
judge of men, predict a distinguished future for the 
new member from Massachusetts. During his Con- 
gressional service he was given various important 
committee assignments, including places on the Judi- 
ciary Committee and on the Committee upon the 
Improvement of the Mississippi River. Mr. Robin- 
son was regular in attendance upon the sessions of 
the House, and devoted his whole strength to the 
public business. During the second session of the 
Forty-fifth Congress he began to participate actively 
in the Congressional debates. As a debater, he was 
distinguished by incisiveness of speech and precision 
of statement, — qualities which made him a formid- 
able antagonist. His familiarity with the rules also 
made him an authority in questions of parliamentary 
procedure, and he was frequently called to preside 
over a Democratic House. 

In the fall of 1882 Mr. Robinson was elected for a 
fourth term, this time as the representative from the 
then new Twelfth District. His place in Congress 



GEORGE D. ROBINSON 169 

was now an influential one ; and he had come to be 
recognized as one of the leaders of the New England 
delegation and one of the strong men of the House. 
Back of him was a united and admiring constitu- 
ency. His Congressional career seemed likely to be 
a long and eminent one ; but it was suddenly termi- 
nated by the unanimous demand of his party to 
lead them in the fiercest campaign they had ever 
been called upon to make for victory in the State 
of Massachusetts. 

In 1882 General Butler, supported by the whole 
Democratic party, and by a considerable number of 
Republicans, who constituted his personal following, 
had carried the State, and been elected Governor. 
His administration, by the course he chose to follow, 
had aroused deep resentments, and to the intense 
desire of the Republicans as a party to regain the 
State was added a great deal of personal bitterness. 
The Republican organization therefore began its 
work early, for there was much to do. But the all- 
important point to be decided was who should be the 
candidate to lead the fight against General Butler. 
It was neither an easy nor an inviting task, and the 
prospect of victory was anything but certain. 

It was my fortune to be at that time chairman of 
the Republican State Committee, and in charge of 
the campaign. I had no personal acquaintance with 
Governor Robinson, and knew him only by reputa- 



170 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

tion as a distinguished and leading member of Con- 
gress. It seemed to me, however, at the very start, 
on looking over the whole field, that he would be 
our strongest candidate against General Butler ; but 
I felt that, in view of the serious contest before us, 
the candidate should be selected by the well-con- 
sidered opinion of the party, and that it was not the 
time for any interference by the State Committee in 
regard to the nomination. I was, therefore, very 
careful to say nothing whatever as to my own views 
in regard to candidates. As time went on, several 
distinguished Republicans were suggested for the 
nomination ; but in each case a refusal to run fol- 
lowed. Finally, party opinion settled down on Mr. 
Henry L. Pierce ; and, as the date fixed for the con- 
vention approached, it was clear that he would be 
nominated with practical unanimity. That this 
would be the result of the convention was generally 
understood, and was accepted on all sides. 

On the day before the convention Mr. Pierce sent 
for me, and told me that he could not be a candidate. 
His sudden withdrawal at the last moment was a 
very serious matter, when the all-important question 
of the nomination was thought to have been con- 
clusively settled. It threatened to throw everything 
into confusion, and start us most unfortunately in 
the severe struggle which we knew was at hand. I 
remember very well the consternation of every one 



GEORGE D. ROBINSON 171 

when I went back to the rooms of the State Com- 
mittee, and stated officially that Mr. Pierce had 
finally withdrawn. I felt anxious myself, but not so 
much disturbed as the others ; for I knew Mr. Rob- 
inson was coming to town, and I meant to appeal to 
him to step into the gap and take the nomination. 
I met him that day at the office of his brother, 
Charles Robinson, in the Rogers Building. Our 
interview is one of the incidents of my life which I 
most vividly remember. After we had shaken 
hands, I said to him, " Mr. Robinson, Mr. Pierce 
has withdrawn, and you must take the nomination." 
He looked at me with his head up in the confident 
manner so characteristic of him, and with which 
I became afterwards so familiar, and said, " Mr. 
Lodge, I have not sought the governorship ; but, if 
the party wants me and needs me, I will stand." I 
shall never forget the relief which 1 felt and the confi- 
dence with which his answer, coming as it did in the 
midst of refusals and hesitations, inspired me. 

He was nominated the next day, practically with- 
out opposition ; and his short speech of acceptance 
gave to the convention the same feeling of confidence 
which he had already given to me„ When he looked 
the delegates, as he did every one, squarely in the 
face, and said, " It is your duty to command : I count 
it mine to obey," a sense of relief filled the conven- 
tion. After the days of doubt, hesitation, and alarm 



172 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

the strong man, the man able and willing to lead, 
had come; and every one recognized it. As we 
walked away together after the convention, he said 
to me : " We have a hard fight before us, and you 
and I are to be thrown together very closely. I 
want you to be perfectly frank with me about every- 
thing, and to call upon me unhesitatingly for all I 
can do. I am a poor man, and have no money to 
put into the campaign ; but my time and strength 
are at the service of the party." Every one knows 
how he kept his word ; but no one can appreciate it, 
I think, quite so fully as I do. The relations be- 
tween the chairman of a State committee and his 
candidate are not always very easy. The chairman, 
working for party victory, is obliged to press the 
candidate pretty hard, and sometimes almost un- 
reasonably ; but in that campaign the candidate met 
every demand upon him, not only willingly, but 
gladly. 

Governor Robinson shrank from no effort and no 
fatigue. He made during the campaign, as I re- 
member, some seventy-three speeches. I think he 
made nine on the last day ; and he never failed in 
the force, variety, and freshness of what he said. 
With the exception of the Lincoln and Douglas de- 
bate, I do not believe that Governor Robinson's 
campaign against General Butler has ever been 
surpassed in a debate before the people. It was a 



GEORGE D. ROBINSON 173 

close, hard fight ; and I have never questioned that 
it was his commanding leadership which turned the 
scale. He never lost his temper, his good sense 
never failed. He followed his antagonist relent- 
lessly, and without a syllable of personal abuse 
struck blow after blow, and never left an argument 
unanswered or a position unassailed. The confi- 
dence and enthusiasm which he inspired grew and 
strengthened with each day and with every speech ; 
and when it was all over and the polls had closed, 
he received the news of his victory with the same 
calm cheerfulness with which he had faced the heady 
currents of the fight. 

After his brilliant and successful campaign for the 
governorship, he went to Washington in December, 
1883, to participate in the organization of the Forty- 
eighth Congress, to which he had been elected the 
year before. On the 2d of January following he 
forwarded his resignation of his seat in Congress to 
Governor Butler. The Governor's reply was character- 
istic : " Your resignation of your office of representa- 
tive in the Forty-eighth Congress of the United States 
from the Twelfth District of Massachusetts, tendered 
to the Governor of the Commonwealth this morning, 
is hereby accepted, the reason prompting the same 
being so entirely satisfactory to the majority of the 
people of the State." 

Thus he passed from the parliamentary field, for 



174 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

which he was so peculiarly fitted, and where he had 
won so much success, to the high executive office of 
Governor of Massachusetts. He was twice re-elected 
without really serious opposition, and was never in 
danger of defeat. To the important business of ad- 
ministration he brought the same diligence, ability, 
thoroughness, and conscientious work which had 
marked his whole career. He was an extremely 
successful governor. He had entire courage, and 
never hesitated to stop a measure with his veto if he 
thought it wrong, no matter how strong the popu- 
lar feeling in its favor appeared to be. He devoted 
to the endless details of executive business the same 
attention, thought, and ability which he used to give 
to an exciting debate in the national House, when 
he was speaking and voting with the eyes of the 
country upon him. He came up to the high stand- 
ard which the State demands of her governors, and at 
the close of his last term he commanded the approval 
of all the people to a degree which is rarely witnessed. 
The State was proud of him, the people admired him ; 
but the feeling which he inspired above all others 
was complete confidence in his ability, courage, and 
strength. 

When he left the governorship, he returned to 
private life and to the practice of his profession. 
He liked the work of public life, as every strong 
man likes to do that which he knows he does well j 



GEORGE D. ROBINSON 175 

but Governor Robinson felt that his duty to his 
family required him to abandon politics, although he 
might have had anything the State could give, 
and address himself to labors which would make 
provision for the future and for those dearest to him. 
There were no repinings and no rejoicings. He went 
out of public life, leaving behind him all its attrac- 
tion and all its drawbacks, with the same philo- 
sophic cheerfulness with which he had accepted his 
first nomination for governor or heard later the 
news of his great victory flashed over the wires to 
Chicopee. Once out of politics, he cast no backward 
looks, but gave his whole strength to his profession, 
although he would always come forward in the cam- 
paigns and help his party with a speech, when the 
fight was hottest and his aid most needed. 

Of his success at the bar, after his return to it 
there is no need to speak. It is still fresh in every 
one's mind. Thus busily engaged, nine years went 
by ; and then he was suddenly stricken down. He 
was so strong, so temperate, so vigorous in all ways 
that the idea of illness seemed utterly remote from 
him. We all, I think, regarded him as a man, above 
all others, who was destined to a long life and to a 
strong old age, surpassing even that of his long-lived 
ancestry. Death is the commonest of events; but 
it is always a surprise, and in this case the shock was 
especially sudden and severe. The blow was instant 



176 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

and decisive, like the strong man who fell beneath 
it; but it was none the less hard to bear for the 
people of this Commonwealth, who had looked up to 
him, followed him, honored him. Still in his prime, 
in the vigor of his manhood, he had been reft from 
us ; and the people of Massachusetts mourned beside 
his grave. 

So the story of the life and the career ends with 
the sad ending of all our little human histories. It 
seems to me a very fine story, even when told as im- 
perfectly and incompletely as I have told it to you. 
It is not only a life which it will be a pride to his 
children to recall, but it is full of meaning and en- 
couragement to us all. The character and qualities 
of the man himself seem to me to shine out very 
brightly through the brief abstract and chronicle of 
what he did in this busy world. They are worth 
considering by all men who love Massachusetts, and 
who are inspired with eager, earnest hopes for the 
destiny of their country and their race. 

Note, first, that he was a strong man physically, 
big, deep-chested, able to withstand toil and stress. 
This is a point which is too often overlooked ; and 
yet it is of grave importance, for the puny races of 
men go to the wall. Governor Eobinson was a fine 
proof of the fact that the descendants of the hardy 
Englishmen who settled here had not degenerated, 
but rather had waxed stronger in bone and muscle 



GEORGE D. ROBINSON 177 

and sinews in their two hundred and fifty years of 
American life. Mind and character matched the 
physical attributes. Strength of will and vigor of 
mind were his two most characteristic qualities. He 
was exceedingly temperate in all ways, a man of 
pure, clean, wholesome life. The desires of the 
senses were under as much control as his temper. 
He was always cool, and his judgment was never 
clouded by excitement. The stern spirit of self- 
sacrifice to a great purpose, which brought the Puri- 
tans to the wilderness, survived in him, mellowed no 
doubt, but just as effective as of old in the condi- 
tions of life which he was called to meet. He had 
deep convictions on all questions ; but he was always 
just, tolerant, and fair. He was a hard worker, one 
who never shirked and never complained. Rarely 
have I met a man of such even cheerfulness under all 
circumstances. The words which Washington used 
about the Constitution often came to my mind when 
I watched Governor Robinson's method of dealing 
with public affairs : " We have set up a standard to 
which the good and wise may repair : the event is in 
the hands of God." He did his best always, and never 
worried before nor repined after the event, if things 
went ill, nor rejoiced unduly, if they went well. 

He made his greatest reputation as a debater in 
Congress and before the people. He was not a rhet- 
orician, and never tried to be. When Antony says, 

12 



178 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

" I am no orator, as Brutus is ; 
But, as you know me all, a plain, blunt man, 
That love my friend. 
I only speak right on," 

we recognize the artistic self-depreciation of the most 
consummate orator who ever lived, if he spoke as 
Shakespeare makes him speak. But what Antony- 
said for effect might be said with truth of Governor 
Robinson. He was the plain, blunt man who spoke 
right on ; and he was a master of this most difficult 
and very telling kind of oratory. He was no phrase- 
maker, no rounder of periods, no seeker for meta- 
phors ; but he was one of the most effective and 
convincing speakers, whether to Congress, to a great 
popular audience, or to a jury, that I ever listened to. 
The very way in which he faced an audience, with 
his head up, and a bold, confident, but never arrogant 
manner, calmed the most hostile and roused the 
most indifferent. He used simple language and 
clear sentences. He had a remarkable power of 
nervous, lucid statement, — a very great gift. His 
arguments were keen and well knit, and illumined 
by a strong sense of humor and a dry wit which 
were very delightful. He had, above all, the rare 
and most precious faculty of making his hearers 
feel that he was putting into words just what they 
had always thought, but had never been able to 
express quite so well. To do this is very difficult. 



GEORGE D. ROBINSON 179 

It does not come merely by nature. The most fa- 
mous poet of Queen Anne's day thought it a very 
great art; for he tells us that 

" True wit is nature to advantage dressed ; 
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed." 

Governor Robinson was, in one word, a great 
debater, — one of the best of his generation ; and 
when I say this, it implies that he was a man of un- 
usual powers of thought, incisive, quick, and of large 
mental resource. 

But his remarkable ability as a speaker, his shrewd- 
ness and justice and diligence in all the affairs of life, 
his calm temper and his cheerful philosophy, while 
they were all potent factors in his success and his 
popularity, were not his only nor his highest qual- 
ities. It is a very happy thing to be popular and 
successful ; but it is a much nobler thing to command 
the affectionate and deep confidence, not only of 
friends, but of a great community. This Governor 
Robinson did in a high degree, and the secret lay in 
his character. People trusted him, not because he 
was a brilliant and convincing speaker, of whom 
they were proud, or even because he was a faithful 
and admirable chief magistrate, but because they 
knew him to be an entirely honest and fearless 
man. They saw that he was simple in his life, 
thoroughly democratic, educated, and trained, with 



180 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

a mind open to new ideas, and yet with the ingrained 
conservatism and the reverence for law and order 
which New England has always cherished ; and, 
therefore, they believed in him. Instinctively, the 
people turned to him as the strong man fit for 
leadership and command, who would never waver 
in the face of danger and never betray a trust. 

Is not our question as to the result of the Puritan 
civilization answered by such a life and such a char- 
acter ? The old qualities are all there, the old fight- 
ing qualities, and ever with them the mastering 
sense of duty to God, to country, and to family. 
They have not weakened in the centuries that have 
come and gone. They have broadened, but they 
have not pined or faded. They have not been 
refined and cultivated to nothingness; and if you 
strike down and call upon the yeomanry of Massa- 
chusetts, you find a man like this to stand forward, 
when the State needs him. They tell us sometimes 
that our people are too much like the granite of our 
hills. So be it. Strength and endurance, offering 
an unchanging face to storm and sunshine alike, 
are the qualities of granite and the foundations also 
on which a race can build a great present and a 
mighty future. But let it not be forgotten that, if 
the outside of the granite cliff is somewhat stern and 
gray, when you pierce its heart, you find running 
across it the rich warm veins of color gathered there 



GEORGE D. ROBINSON 181 

through dim ages in which contending forces moulded 
the earth forms we now see about us. Again, I say 
we have done well to meet together in memory of 
such a man. He has earned our praise and our 
gratitude, not only for what he did and for the high 
titles he wore so well, but for what he was. In his 
life he was respected, honored, loved, and trusted. 
At his death the State, over which he had once been 
set, bowed her head in grief. But across the dark- 
ness of the sorrow comes the light which such a life 
sheds ; for we may take to our hearts the lesson it 
brings, — that all is well with state and country 
while they breed such men as this. 



THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 
HI 

ROGER WOLCOTT^ 

"Every moment dies a man, 
Every moment one is born." 

There is much sad philosophy in these simple and 
familiar lines from Tennyson's famous poem. The 
lamp of life kindles into light by one hearthstone, 
only to sink down in darkness by another. Every 
moment death, the only absolute certainty of life, 
descends upon one of the children of men. Every 
moment some home is darkened, some family bereft, 
some heart saddened, perhaps broken. In some 
corner, no matter how small or humble, at every 
instant the light has gone out, and the little world 
of the inmates has crumbled away about them. 
Surely it seems to them at that dark hour that the 
very universe itself must have stopped too. Then 
comes swiftly the first harsh awakening. The 
stricken soul, when night has passed, looks forth, 

^ An address delivered at Symphony Hall in Boston on the occa- 
sion of the services in memory of Roger Wolcott, Governor of Massa- 
chusetts, 1898-1901, on April 18, 1901. 



ROGER WOLCOTT 183 

and lo ! the great world of nature is unchanged. 
The rising sun shoots its red shafts across the dark 
waters, or gilds the city roof or country tree top 
even as it did before. The twitter of birds is in 
the air, the myriad sounds of life rise murmuring 
from the earth, a new day is given to man, and 
nature, smiling or frowning, is still the same, ever 
beautiful and ever indifferent to human joy or hu- 
man sorrow. 

Then comes a yet sharper pang. Nature's world 
moves on, and so, alas, does the world of man. 
Horatio, kneeling by the body of Hamlet, lifts his 
head and cries, " Why does the drum come hither ? " 
The prince he loved, the noble Laertes, the king and 
queen, all the majesty of Denmark, lie dead about 
him, slain in an instant by steel or poison. His 
world is in ruins at his feet. Here assuredly is the 
end of all things. And then, even then, at that 
supreme moment, the sounds of life and war quiver 
in the air. "Why does the drum come hither?" 
All is not over, then. Another sunrise is at hand, 
another day beginning. Hamlet is dead, and yet the 
world is marching on just as of yore. Its drum- 
beats break the tragic silence, and the coming foot- 
steps of the new king sound in the mourner's ear. 
In all the range of the greatest genius among men 
there is no finer, deeper touch than in that sudden 
cry from Horatio. Those few words are fraught 



184 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

with more meaning than many a solemn Greek 
chorus ; they pierce our hearts with the eternal cry 
of humanity in the first agony of sorrow; they tell 
as mercilessly as the Norns of the dim Northland 
that the world of nature and of men is ever moving 
on its appointed way. 

When, therefore, it happens that a man's death 
gives pause to the march of life, when the footfall 
of the columns grows faint and ceases, when the 
drums are hushed and a stillness gathers over the 
world in which he has played his part, then we may 
know that he who has gone was one deserving of 
remembrance, for his going has stayed the great 
procession in its course, and there must have been 
that about him which had sunk very deep into the 
hearts and minds of his fellow-men. Such was the 
man in whose memory we meet to-day. When he 
died there came a hush over the old Commonwealth. 
Among the distant hills, in crowded city streets, and 
by the sounding sea men and women paused. Grief 
was in their hearts, and words of sorrow on their 
lips. The drums were muffled, the columns halted, 
the march of life was stayed. When he was buried 
the people of city and of State poured forth to do 
him honor. They turned from their business or 
their pleasure and bowed themselves in the house of 
mourning. It was no formal sorrow, no official 
grief, which thus found expression. It came from 



ROGER WOLCOTT 185 

the heart, — from the heart of a great people, who 
had known and loved him. 

"We would fain leave something behind us to tell 
those who come after us why we so sorrowed, and 
what manner of man he was for whom we grieved. 
We have the human yearning to bear our testimony, 
the testimony of those who knew him, in such 
fashion that the erasing finger of the fleeting years 
may spare it to be read by the generations yet un- 
born. For this purpose we have gathered here to- 
day. For this purpose I have been chosen to put 
into imperfect words that which we all feel, to ex- 
press in formal and in public manner the sorrow and 
admiration of State and city for the man so long 
the first citizen and the chief magistrate of the 
Commonwealth. 

You will pardon me if for a moment I speak with 
a personal accent. To be summoned to tell the life 
story and life work of a dear friend and contempo- 
rary is the saddest of all the labors of love. I turn 
to the record to draw from it the story I would re- 
peat to you, and which we all know so well. Every- 
thing is there ready to my hand, but memory and 
her attendant ghosts come between me and the 
printed page, and will not be swept aside. I cannot 
see the facts and dates now. I can see only two 
handsome brothers, boys at school, liked by all, 
especially popular with the smaller boys, of whom I 



186 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

am one, because they are always kind and good- 
natured. Fine, manly, vigorous boys they are; 
active in every sport and full of the joy of existence. 
It is war time, and the school is very patriotic and 
feverishly interested in soldiers and in battles. 
Presently the elder of the brothers disappears from 
school, and we hear that he has gone to the war. 
We all think it very splendid, and wish that we too 
could go and follow him. 

Memories of boyhood are like dreams. They take 
no heed of time. There is in memory no space 
between the elder brother at school and the next 
scene. In reality there was an interval of brave, 
active service, even while we boys at home played on 
as before. All this vanishes in recollection. He 
had gone to the front, he had come home wasted 
with fever, he was dead, that was all we knew. 
Now the page of memory grows luminous indeed. 
The school goes to his funeral, and there, in the 
familiar house in Boylston Street, we see him in his 
coffin, very pale and worn, dressed in the uniform of 
the United States, while the younger brother stands 
beside the dead, learning a lesson which is to affect 
his whole life. Now we know once for all what 
patriotism means. The whole scene shines out in 
memory like the landscape under the flash of light- 
ning on a summer's night. 

Then the veil drops again, the years go by, and I 



ROGER WOLCOTT 187 

see the survivor of the two brothers entering college 
in the same year as myself, he as sophomore and I 
as freshman. Although a class ahead of me, he is 
one of the well-remembered figures of my Harvard 
days ; handsome, kindly always, one of those who 
in any place or company could never be overlooked, 
and we meet constantly in societies and in the daily 
life of the college. Then he passed from Cambridge. 
I followed him, and we went our several ways into 
the world. Presently I heard of him in city politics, 
then in the legislature ; then our paths again con- 
verged, and he rose to be the head of the State and 
of the party. Thus we came together once more, as 
in the old school days, engaged now in a common 
cause, and speaking many times from the same plat- 
form. However often we met in this way, the pride 
and pleasure I felt in watching him and in listening 
to his ripening eloquence grew with each occasion, 
and the pride and pleasure were of that peculiar 
kind which springs up only when two men have 
been boys together and friends for a lifetime. 
Every time I saw him rise and address an audience 
I felt a fresh glow of delight as I looked at him, and 
thought how completely the stately figure, the clear 
and dignified speech, the honesty of purpose and high- 
minded devotion to duty which could be read in his 
face and heard in his words befitted the great office 
which he held. Again and again I have longed to 



188 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

cry out to the world, " Look well upon him ; that 
is the man whom Massachusetts chooses to represent 
her ; do you wonder that we are proud of the State 
which breeds such men, and gives such a successor to 
Winthrop and to Andrew ? " I cannot longer trust 
myself with memories. They are bringing me too 
near the shadowed present. They can only end in 
unavailing tears. Each in our degree, we all share 
in them and treasure them. 

" There 's rosemary, that 's for remembrance : 
Pray, love, remember." 

We who have known him, we shall not forget. 
Let me lay down the rosemary, it is nearest to our 
hearts, and from the records of the past gather up 
the laurel. 

No element of the English-speaking people has had 
a more profound influence upon their history and for- 
tunes, both in the old world and the new, than the 
Puritans of the seventeenth century and their de- 
scendants. From the stock of Puritan Englishmen, 
pure and unmixed, Roger Wolcott derived his ances- 
try. The founder of the family in New England 
was Henry Wolcott, a Somersetshire gentleman, the 
owner of Goldon Manor, and other estates near Tol- 
land in that county. He did not leave England 
when past middle life to seek new fortunes in a new 
world, but he abandoned fortune, high position, and 
a generous estate in obedience to his religious beliefs, 



ROGER WOLCOTT 189 

and fared forth across the Atlantic to find a home 
for them in the forests of America. He reached 
Boston the 30th of May, 1630, settled at Dorchester, 
as it was named soon afterward, and moved thence, 
with Mr. Wareham's church, to Windsor, Connecti- 
cut. In 1637 he was chosen a member of the lower 
house of the legislature, and next year a member of 
the upper house of magistrates, to which he was an- 
nually re-elected during the remainder of his life. 

Simon "Wolcott, the son of the immigrant, married 
Martha Pitkin, the sister of the governor of the 
colony, and of this marriage was born Roger, in 
1679. Before he was thirty Roger had become 
selectman of his town, and thus began his long and 
active career, which was at once military, judicial, 
and political. He was commissary of the American 
forces in the Canadian expedition of 1711, and second 
in command to Sir William Pepperell in the campaign 
of 1745, which resulted in the capture of Louisburg. 
As a lawyer he rose steadily, attaining the Supreme 
Bench in 1732. As a public man he reached the 
highest place, that of governor, to which he was 
chosen in 1750 and for four successive years. He 
was a strong, able man of high character and great 
vigor, possessing, evidently, in full measure the ver- 
satility of the Elizabethan Englishmen from whom 
he sprang. 

Oliver, the son of Roger, followed in his father's 



190 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

footsteps. A captain in the old French war, he was 
a brigadier and afterward a major-general in the Rev- 
olution. Again, like his father, he was a member 
of the Legislature and the Council, then a Probate 
Judge and Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. When 
the Revolution came he was an active member of the 
Committee of Safety, for seven years a member 
of the Continental Congress, and a signer of the 
Declaration of Independence. His son Oliver also 
saw service in the army during the Revolution, was 
admitted to the bar, and in 1789 was appointed Audi- 
tor of the Treasury by Washington. Two years later 
he was made Comptroller, and in 1795, on the retire- 
ment of Hamilton, he became Secretary of the Treas- 
ury and a member of Washington's Cabinet. In this 
position he continued during the Adams administra- 
tion, retiring in 1800 and accepting a seat on the 
bench of the United States as a judge of the Circuit 
Court for the second district. In 1815 he returned to 
his native town, and in 1817 was elected governor of 
Connecticut, an office which he held for ten years by 
successive annual elections. 

Another son of the elder Oliver, and a brother of 
the Secretary of the Treasury, was Frederick Wol- 
cott, who, after the fashion of his family, was dis- 
tinguished in the public life of his own State, although 
he never entered the field of national politics. He 
served the State in Legislature and Council and on 



ROGER WOLCOTT 191 

the bench. He was a member of the Corporation of 
Yale College and conspicuous in philanthropy and 
all movements for the advancement of learning. He 
married Elizabeth Huntington, the granddaughter of 
Jabez Huntington, who was one of the leading pa- 
triots of Connecticut ; he and his five sons being all 
soldiers in the Revolutionary War, and all distin- 
guished in the service. From this marriage was 
born Joshua Huntington Wolcott, who, coming as 
a boy to Boston, entered the counting-house of 
A. & A. Lawrence, rose to be a partner at the age 
of twenty-six, and during a long life was a success- 
ful merchant of high character, ability, and probity. 
In Boston he married Cornelia, the daughter of 
Samuel Frothingham, and by her had two sons, — 
Huntington, who died a soldier of the United States, 
and Roger, the late governor of this Commonwealth. 
It is worth consideration, this genealogy which I 
have hastily sketched in bare outline. We have 
here one of the rare instances of a family which, 
starting in America with a man of fortune and good 
estate, always retained its position in the community. 
In the main line at least it never encountered the 
vicissitudes which attend nearly all families in the 
course of two hundred and fifty years. The name 
never dropped out of sight, but was always borne up 
by its representatives in the same place in society as 
that held by the founder. More remarkable still, in 



192 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

almost every generation there was at least one of the 
lineal male descendants of the first immigrant who 
rose to the ver^^ highest positions in military, politi- 
cal, and judicial life. The list of judges, governors, 
generals. Cabinet officers, and members of Congress 
in this pedigree is a long and striking one. From 
the days of the Somersetshire gentleman to those of 
the present generation, which has given a governor 
to Massachusetts and a brilliant Senator from Colo- 
rado to the United States, the Wolcotts, both as 
soldiers and civilians, have rendered service to their 
country, as eminent as it has been unbroken. War and 
statecraft were in the blood of this race, and can we 
wonder that they have found fitting exemplars in 
our own time ? It is not a name made illustrious 
by some single ancestor in a dim past and suffered 
to rust unused by descendants who were content with 
the possession of a trade-mark. Here is a long roll 
of honor, where the son felt that he would be un- 
worthy of his father if he did not add fresh lustre to 
the name he bore by service to his State and country, 
either in the hour of trial or in the pleasant paths of 
peace. 

This, then, was the heritage, these the traditions 
to which Roger Wolcott fell heir when he was born 
in Boston on July 13, 1847. There and in Milton 
his boyhood was passed. He was educated at the 
private Latin school of Mr. E. S. Dixwell, and for a 



ROGER WOLCOTT 193 

short time in Europe, whither he went with his family 
after his brother's death. He returned in 1867 and 
entered the sophomore class at Harvard in that year. 
He took a conspicuous place in college, and stood 
high, not only in his studies, but in the estimation 
of the faculty and in the regard of his own class and 
of all the students of that period. He was chosen 
the orator of his class, and delivered the oration on 
his class day in 1870. Class day orations do not, as 
a rule, add much to permanent literature or to the 
sum of human information. They generally pass 
away with the sunshine and the music, the cheers 
and the flowers of the merry day which brings them 
forth. But I have been struck, on reading over 
Governor Wolcott's class oration, with the good 
sense and unusual maturity of thought which it 
displays. These occasions are ordinarily irresistible 
in their temptation to a profuse use of language and 
to the exhibition of a wisdom or a cynicism of which 
happy youth is alone capable. Here in Governor 
Wolcott's oration there is nothing of all this. The 
style is sober and unstrained, and there is a central 
thought which is followed steadily. His plea was for 
the preservation of enthusiasm and faith, a gospel 
always worth preaching to a graduating class, dis- 
posed to be world-weary, and too seldom expounded 
by a student to his fellows. One sentence is so char- 
acteristic and foretells so strongly the future career 

13 



194 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

of the speaker that I will quote it. " No educated 
man," he says, " is justified in shrinking from the 
responsibility which is thrust upon him, nor is it 
possible for an American citizen to wash his hands 
of his country. There is no such thing as neutrality 
in citizenship. He who is not with his country is 
against her." Sound doctrine, strongly put ; more 
needed just then, I think, than now, but carrying a 
truth which cannot too often be pressed home upon 
the educated men of the United States. 

After graduation Governor Wolcott was for two 
years a tutor in French at Harvard. At the same 
time he studied law, taking his degree at the Law 
School in 1874, and soon after was admitted to the 
Suffolk bar, although he never engaged in active 
practice. Almost immediately upon leaving college 
he began to take part in politics, and his beginning 
was of exactly the right sort. He did not manifest 
his interest in public affairs by merely criticising 
those who were engaged in them, and by doleful 
wailings that things generally were not better. On 
the contrary, he plunged in himself and tried to 
make things better by his own exertions. He took 
his share of party work, went to ward meetings, 
helped to get the vote registered and to bring it out, 
and then distributed ballots at the polls on election 
day. In 1876 he was elected to the Common Council, 
where he served for three years (1877, 1878, 1879), 



ROGER WOLCOTT 195 

becoming the acknowledged leader, and being sup- 
ported by his party for the presidency of that body. 
In 1881 he was elected to the House of Representa- 
tives in the legislature. His second year was that 
of General Butler as governor, — a somewhat try- 
ing period, especially to Mr. Wolcott, who was the 
recognized leader of the Republicans on the floor. 
He served three years in the legislature, winning 
the confidence of every one, and extending his 
reputation throughout the State as a man of ability, 
judgment, high character, and devotion to the public 
interests. 

It was at this time, and owing to his success in 
the legislature, that his name was first suggested as 
a candidate for governor. The suggestion, without 
doubt, would soon have borne fruit had it not been 
for the course of national politics. The nomination 
of Mr. Blaine for the presidency was opposed by 
Mr. Wolcott, and when made was strongly disap- 
proved by him. He was too earnest a Republican 
and too deeply attached to Republican principles to 
throw himself into opposition or seek to destroy his 
party because it had made a nomination which was 
distasteful to him. He contented himself by with- 
drawing for the time from the active political work 
in which he had always been so much engaged. 
This retirement, however, implied neither inactivity 
nor leisure. He had many occupations and pursuits 



196 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

other than politics to which he was able to devote 
himself, and where he could render valuable service 
to the public. 

I have been astonished, in looking over the list of 
positions which he held, at the number and variety 
of his interests and at the work which I know these 
positions must have involved, especially for a man 
with his keen sense of responsibility. If I mention 
some of them, the mere recital of the names will 
bring a more vivid idea of the fulness of his life 
than any words of description could possibly do. 
He was a trustee of the New England Trust Com- 
pany, a director of the Providence Railroad and 
of several manufacturing corporations. The offer 
once made to him of the treasurership of one of 
the New England mills is proof of the capacity he 
showed in these business positions and of the at- 
tention he gave to their duties. He was a member 
of the Massachusetts Historical Society and of the 
Society of the Cincinnati and the Society of Colonial 
"Wars, which all appealed strongly to his love of 
American history, in which his ancestors had played 
such honorable parts. He was an overseer of Har- 
vard, and visitor of the departments of the univer- 
sity. He was a vestryman of King's Chapel, a 
member of the Civil Service Reform and Social 
Science Associations, a trustee of the Massachusetts 
General Hospital, the Eye and Ear Infirmary, the 



ROGER WOLCOTT 197 

Boston Dispensary, and at one time a visitor among 
the poor for the Provident Association. 

This catalogue, dry as it sounds, has deep signifi- 
cance. Think for a moment how business has been 
promoted, how literature and historical research have 
been advanced, how better manners and purer laws 
have been encouraged, and, most important of all, 
how much charity has been dispensed and how 
greatly human suffering has been relieved by the soci- 
eties and corporations the names of which I have just 
repeated. These libraries and charities and hospitals 
are the glory of this community, and they must be 
directed by men who will work hard and take heavy 
responsibility without any hope or desire of personal 
reward. I have heard it often said that to people 
who have no occupation, much wealth, and some 
education, the United States offers nothing. I 
gratefully and profoundly believe in the truth of 
this proposition. The day is, I trust, far distant 
when America will furnish conditions thoroughly 
agreeable to idlers and triflers. But when it is said, 
as it sometimes is, that there is no opportunity here 
for men of leisure, nothing can be more false. In 
no country in the world is there larger and finer 
opportunity for the man who is master of his time, 
for nowhere is there more need of men who can, 
without pay, serve the community in the beneficent 
work of philanthropy, in the promotion of art and 



198 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

learning, and in all that makes for the relief of 
suffering and the uplifting of the intellectual and 
moral interests of our nation. Roger Wolcott was 
one of the men who understood this need, who re- 
garded his own freedom from the necessity of work 
as a trust to be fulfilled, not as a luxury to be en- 
joyed, and who gave his time and strength to the 
service of his country and his fellow-men just as 
amply as a private citizen as when he held high 
office. It is a noble record of public service unself- 
ishly and quietly performed, an example to be 
studied and followed by all those to whom fortune 
has been bountiful in her gifts. 

Mr. Wolcott' s withdrawal from politics, temporary 
at first, was continued on account of the illness of 
his father. From the time of his brother's death he 
had devoted himself in every way to the effort to fill 
a double place and make up to his parents for the 
loss of the elder son. Only those nearest him can 
appreciate fully the extent of this unselfish devotion 
or of the personal sacrifices he made so cheerfully, 
especially during his father's declining years. Like 
many other duties, it was fulfilled by him simply, 
lovingly, generously. 

When comparative freedom from these absorbing 
cares again was his, he once more entered politics 
and came forward in the hour of defeat to help his 
party by accepting the presidency of the Republican 



ROGER WOLCOTT 199 

Club of Massachusetts, to which his leadership gave 
a strong impetus. This was in 1891, and in the 
following year (1892) he was nominated by the 
Republican convention as their candidate for lieuten- 
ant-governor and was elected. The defeat of the 
Republican candidate for governor made Mr. Wol- 
cott, although holding only the second place in the 
government, the official head of the party at the 
State House. The position was a delicate and diffi- 
cult one, for the powers of the lieutenant-governor 
are constitutionally very limited, and yet much was 
expected of him under the existing conditions. Mr. 
Wolcott's judgment and capacity for leadership were 
put to an immediate test by the question which was 
raised as to the ultimate power of the Council in re- 
gard to its own committees. The governor under- 
took to make it appear that the claim of the Council 
was a mere political device intended to hamper the 
executive for partisan reasons. This view was spe- 
cious and well calculated to draw an unthinking sup- 
port, but Mr. Wolcott was not to be deterred by a 
cry of partisanship from deciding the question on its 
merits. He sustained the view of the Council, and 
took the broad ground that the appointment of com- 
mittees must always rest ultimately in the body 
from which they are to be chosen. His brief state- 
ment of the case, which he put upon the record, was 
at once clear and unanswerable. The attempt to 



200 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

make his action obnoxious as the result of unscru- 
pulous partisanship fell to the ground, for no man 
was more free from such tendencies than he. Mr. 
Wolcott was never extreme, and political bitterness 
was impossible to him. By nature he was broad 
and tolerant, and he was too independent and too 
exacting in his ideals ever to be an unreasoning 
partisan. Yet no man was ever more deeply wedded 
to the great beliefs and fundamental principles of 
the party in which he had been born and bred, and 
which he supported steadily and strongly through- 
out his life. He valued and cherished personal in- 
dependence, but he did not confound independence 
with bitter and chaotic opposition to everything 
which exists, and he understood history too well not 
to be aware that representative government has been 
more or less a failure in every country where the 
system of two great and responsible parties, one of 
government and one of opposition, has not prevailed 
as it always has prevailed among the English-speaking 
people. 

In his speech to the Republican Club on April 8, 
1891, Mr. Wolcott defined his position on the ques- 
tion of political parties and personal independence, 
and in these vigorous sentences he laid down the 
principle by which he himself was guided. He said 
on that occasion : " No word of mine shall ever be 
uttered to depreciate that robust and virile inde- 



ROGER WOLCOTT 201 

pendence in politics which holds country and honor 
above party, which, while acting within party lines, 
ever strives to secure the best in men and measures, 
and, often buffeted and defeated, never ceases to 
wage war upon dishonesty and chicanery, using 
party as a weapon, but never wearing it as a yoke. 
But the independent, who prides himself upon being 
a total abstainer, until the day of election, from all 
lot or part in political movements, should be treated 
as those who skulk when the bugle sounds." 

In 1893 Mr. Wolcott was renominated for lieu- 
tenant governor, with Mr. Greenhalge as the candi- 
date for governor. Both were elected, and the same 
ticket was renominated and re-elected in 1894 and 
1895 by large and increasing majorities. On March 
5, 1896, Governor Greenhalge, honored and beloved, 
died in office, and Mr. Wolcott became the acting 
governor of the Commonwealth. He assumed the 
office of the chief executive under sad circumstances, 
which no one felt more deeply than he, for he was 
sincerely attached to his associate and predecessor. 
But he came to his new place possessed of an unusual 
familiarity with all its duties, drawn from nearly 
four years of experience as lieutenant-governor. 
The affairs of the State moved on smoothly and 
easily under his guidance, without any sign of 
disturbance. 

In the autumn of 1896 Mr. Wolcott was unani- 



202 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

mously nominated by the Republican convention as 
their candidate for governor. No one else indeed 
was mentioned, or even thought of. Not merely had 
he borne himself so well as acting governor that it 
would have been impossible to have displaced him, 
but in his years of service as lieutenant-governor he 
had established himself firmly in the good opinion of 
the people, and had gained a strong hold upon their 
affection. In these years they had come to know 
him. He had appeared much in public, and had 
made speeches on many subjects, by no means con- 
fined to the political questions of the day. Always 
dignified, thoughtful, and interesting, he grew and 
developed with constant practice until he became 
one of the best speakers in the State. Gifted with a 
commanding presence and a powerful, ringing voice, 
he at once held the attention of his audiences. He 
had an ample vocabulary and a cultivated style and 
diction. On the many occasions and celebrations at 
which our governors are expected to appear he not 
only always said something worth hearing, some- 
thing serious and weighty, showing alike good sense 
and careful thought, but he was graceful and felici- 
tous, and had a capacity for happy humor with which 
he was largely and fortunately endowed. In dis- 
cussing the great questions of the day relating to the 
tariff and the currency he showed himself master of 
his subject, and his arguments were cogent and well 



ROGER WOLCOTT 203 

knit, effective and convincing. He put his points 
sharply and strongly, often with a glow of eloquence, 
and sometimes with epigrammatic force, as when at 
the ratification meeting of 1896 he spoke of the 
*^ honor Democrats," a phrase which went all over 
the country. When he became acting governor he 
had already demonstrated to the State not only his 
character and his fitness for public affairs, but he had 
proved that he was an eloquent speaker, and able to 
deal as a statesman with the largest public questions. 
Thus the nomination for the first place went to him 
by general accord, and with the most widespread and 
genuine enthusiasm. He took a leading part in the 
great national campaign of that year in Massachu- 
setts, and was elected by a phenomenal majority, the 
largest ever given to a governor. 

Mr. Wolcott held the governorship for three years, 
being re-elected by majorities surpassed only by that 
which he himself received in 1896. Owing to the 
growth of population, the duties of the chief execu- 
tive of Massachusetts have greatly increased of late 
years, and now entail a heavy burden of work upon 
any man with a strong sense of responsibility. This 
feeling of responsibility was especially keen in Gov- 
ernor Wolcott. Every interest of the State was the 
subject of his personal and thoughtful care. Prisons, 
asylums, and reformatories, the care of the poor, the 
criminal and the insane, schools, railroads, gas and 



204 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

insurance, harbors and lands, municipal government, 
parks, water, roads, and the enforcement of law, — 
all these matters and many others demanded knowl- 
edge, study, and care, and all received them from 
him in full measure. He never shirked or neglected 
anything. Many difficult and debated questions of 
legislation also arose, and every law sent to him 
received his thorough consideration. He never 
sought to shift responsibility upon the legislature, 
but took always his entire share as part of the law- 
making power. More than once he felt obliged to 
differ from the legislature, and he was always ready 
when it seemed to him his duty to use the veto. 
These questions are still too near to be discussed on 
their merits here, even if time permitted and it were 
appropriate to do so. But I think no one can read 
over those veto messages and not be struck by their 
clearness and force and impressed by their sound 
reasoning. Governor Wolcott was not only wisely 
cautious, but he was almost morbidly anxious to be 
exactly just in dealing with any disputed question. 
He would weigh and consider all arguments, and 
look at both sides, but when he had reached his con- 
clusion, when he had made up his mind as to where 
his duty lay, he was entirely fearless, and signed or 
vetoed, as the case might be, without any regard for 
consequences. In his messages and State papers it 
is easy to discern the consistent policy which runs 



ROGER WOLCOTT 205 

through them all. He looked for guidance to the 
interests of the State and to the broad political prin- 
ciples in which he believed. When he had once 
made up his mind in what direction these public 
interests lay, he was not to be turned aside either by 
the pressure of great corporations, or by clamor from 
without, or by anxiety as to the effect of his action 
upon his own fortunes. Righteousness and the wel- 
fare of the Commonwealth in all questions, whether 
personal or political, were, when doubt and conflict 
arose, his ultimate guides, the oracles from whose 
decisions there was no appeal. 

The administration of the ordinary business of the 
State is enough to test any man's strength or make 
any man's reputation, but to Mr. Wolcott there came 
a burden and a trial which are not imposed more 
than once in a generation upon the governor of a 
State. His term of office came at the moment when 
the nation entered upon a new epoch in its history. 
In 1898 war was declared with Spain, and the Presi- 
dent called for troops. The manner in which Massa- 
chusetts responded was in keeping with her past, and 
added a new glory to her history. As in the Revolu- 
tion and the Civil War, she offered the national 
government more than her quota, and place could 
not be found for all the regiments and batteries 
which sought service. The thorough equipment of 
the Massachusetts troops, and the rapidity with 



206 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

which they went forward in complete readiness for 
service gratified and surprised the government at 
Washington. All this is history and known of all 
men, but that which is not so well understood is the 
extent to which the condition of the regiments and 
the rapidity of their mobilization were due to the 
watchful care and unresting energy of the governor. 
We had an excellent militia and a fine and well- 
trained staff, but in military matters more depends 
upon the chief than in any other department. Gov- 
ernor Wolcott supervised everything, and his spirit 
informed all those who obeyed his orders. He sent 
in a message asking for an emergency fund of half 
a million dollars, and in twenty-five minutes the 
bill had passed both Houses and the money was in 
his hands, a mark of confidence in him as fine as the 
unhesitating patriotism of the legislature in the 
presence of war. 

But the governor's duties did not stop there. It 
was for him to spend the money and carry on the 
work. He went to every camp and quickened every 
movement, he thought and labored for the equip- 
ment, and it was his voice which bade the soldiers 
God-speed, and in lofty and inspiring words sent 
them forth to fight for their country with the bless- 
ing of Massachusetts upon them. He kept the same 
watch over the soldiers in the field, and when they 
returned from the war, many of them wasted with 



ROGER WOLCOTT 207 

fever, he was the first to meet them on the transport 
or the railroad train, the first to greet them and to 
say to them, " Well done," in the name of the Com- 
monwealth. He went among them, stood by their 
cots, gentle and sympathetic as a woman, strong and 
encouraging as a man. With his own hands he min- 
istered to them, and from his own purse he often fed 
them ; he aided them in every way, he was much 
more than their commander, he was their friend. In 
all his career of distinguished public service I like 
best to think of Roger Wolcott as he appeared at 
that moment ; and the recollection of that gracious, 
stately figure among the sick, the wounded, and the 
dying, bringing hope and comfort with the authority 
of high place and the tenderness of love, will ever be 
one of the cherished and beautiful memories of 
Massachusetts. 

In January, 1900, Mr. Wolcott retired from the 
governorship. For seven years he had been in the 
service of the State, and during the last four his 
work had been anxious and incessant. He went 
with his family to Europe for a much-needed, well- 
earned rest. He was in the prime of his powers, as 
vigorous physically as he was mentally, for he had 
always lived a wholesome life, and was a lover of 
outdoor air and exercise and an admirable rider. 
Every one looked forward to his having many years 
before him of distinguished service in the larger 



208 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

national field, and with his ripe experience winning 
fresh honors for himself and for the State. Oppor- 
tunities indeed came quickly. President McKinlej 
asked him to be a commissioner to the Philippines, 
one of the most important places in the whole range 
of statesmanship, but private reasons obliged him to 
decline. Later in the summer, when General Draper, 
to the regret of every one, resigned, I had the pleas- 
ure of joining with Senator Hoar in the request that 
Governor Wolcott might be sent to Rome. The 
President immediately offered him the Italian em- 
bassy, and I longed to have him take it, not because 
he was my friend, but because I felt so much pride 
in the thought of having the United States repre- 
sented in Europe by such a man. Again, however, 
he was compelled to refuse on account of personal 
and family reasons. He returned to Boston in time 
to make one speech for his party and to cast his vote 
for President McKinley. It was a joy to have him 
again among us, looking so well and with so much 
promise for a brilliant future. 

" The hope of unaccomplished years 
Seemed large and lucid round his brow." 

But it was not to be. The hand of death was on 
him even then. Before the year closed he was gone, 
and the whole State was mourning by his grave. 
To tell the story of a life filled with action and 



ROGER WOLCOTT 209 

achievement within the limits of an address such as 
this is impossible. No one knows how inadequate, 
how barren the meagre outline is, so well as he who 
attempts it. Yet it is still possible to learn some- 
thing, even from the dry facts so hurriedly rehearsed. 
Here was a man born to all that men most desire. 
He was strong, handsome, vigorous in mind and 
body. He had wealth and position. He was fortu- 
nate in his birth, fortunate in his ancestry, thrice 
fortunate in his marriage and in his home. Here 
was strong temptation to ease, to repose, to self- 
indulgence, or to an existence of cultured leisure. 
They were all put aside for an active, earnest life, 
filled with hard work. At the very beginning it 
seems as if he had taken as his rule the injunction 
which Dante puts into the mouth of Ulysses : 

" Considerate la vostra semenza, 
Fatti non foste a viver come bruti, 
Ma per seguir virtude e conoscenza." 

When all is done it looks simple enough, but only 
a man of strong will and determined purpose can do 
it. Some one may say that ambition was the cause. 
Every man who comes to anything has the righteous 
ambition to do something in the world and to do it 
well, but that is a quality, not a cause, and too often 
ends in ineffectual longing. Ambition is but a 
shallow explanation. Remember that the seven 



21U THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

years of high place and large powers were preceded 
by more than twenty years of hard work for the 
public service, both in private and political life; 
work without personal gain, and which might never 
bring any outward reward. The truth lies deeper 
than this. Roger Wolcott felt instinctively that 
every man owes a debt to his country, and that the 
greater the gifts of fortune the larger the debt, the 
heavier the responsibility. That debt he meant to 
pay, that responsibility he meant to meet, and so he 
turned from ease and pleasure to hard work for 
public ends. This is a noble and just conception of 
a man's duty, nowhere so necessary as in this Re- 
public, and it was his in full measure. To those 
placed as he was at the opening of life I would say. 
Look well upon him and strive to imitate him, re- 
membering that great as were the honors he won, 
that which was better than place or title was the 
high ideal of duty as a man and as a citizen, which 
led him to put aside all temptations to ease and 
quiet and go down into the arena of life to fight a 
good fight in the great world of men. 

He was well equipped for the struggle. He had 
health and strength, natural ability, a liberal educa- 
tion, a vigorous, well-trained mind, always alert and 
open, great capacity for work, and an industry which 
never failed. One essential condition of success in 
such a career as Mr. Wolcott's is the capacity to deal 



ROGER WOLCOTT 211 

with other men, and this quality was his in abun- 
dance. He was simple and democratic in his ways, 
with the manners of a thorough man of the world, 
always attractive, easy, and without pretence, and 
yet never undignified or weakly familiar. Here, too, 
his strong sense of humor and love of fun were of 
inestimable service to him as they are to all men, for 
those who possess them are saved from that most 
fatal of errors, taking one's self too seriously and 
mistaking one's relation to the universe. He was 
entirely free from the small vanities and jealousies 
and the morbid absorption in self which are the 
bane of so many excellent persons in all walks of 
public life, and which do more to alienate friends and 
give lasting offence than much more serious faults. 
All these qualities commended him to his fellow-men, 
but that which won most was his clear common- 
sense and honesty of judgment, quickly felt by all 
who were engaged with him in serious a:ffairs, either 
of public or private business. 

More valuable still was the fact that he kept 
always an open mind. He was ready to learn and 
did learn as he advanced, and was always growing 
and developing. His opinions never hardened into 
prejudices, new questions and policies did not frighten 
him, and as he grew older, instead of stiffening, he 
became more kindly and more tolerant. Nothing illus- 
trates this better than his feeling about his country 



212 THREE G0\T:RX0ES OF [MASSACHUSETTS 

and his people. Intensely patriotic by nature, stimu- 
lated in patriotism by his bringing up and by his 
brother's death, his feeling about his country and a 
man's duty to it shines forth in the words which I 
have quoted from his class oration. Then he had 
thirty years of experience in the rough, eager, com- 
bative world of this young and mighty democracy. 
It made him neither hard nor cynical, nor a slave to 
that dangerous wisdom which sneers and doubts. 
This wide experience among men wrought with him, 
as I think it must always work with every open, just, 
and generous mind, and near the close of his life he 
said in a speech : ''If I have learned nothing else 
since I have held office, I have learned to believe in 
the American people. I have learned to believe that 
■^drtue is more common than vice, that noble man- 
hood and womanhood have not died out among us. 
I believe God has made the law of progress, not a 
law of retrogression, and I urge you young men not 
to give way to pessimism. Be courageous, be hope- 
ful. Believe in the destiny of America, believe in 
the purpose of Almighty God, believe with all hope 
in the future." This is not the shallow optimism of 
respectable " gigmanity " which thinks everything is 
for the best in the best of all possible worlds, and 
upon which Voltaire turned his fatal smile. It is 
the faith of a man who knows well that there is 
much wrong, much suffering, much sin in the world. 



ROGER WOLCOTT 213 

who has striven to make his corner of it better and 
brighter, and who has come through the trial with a 
larger hope, and a profounder belief in the American 
people and in their capacity for great tasks, with a 
deeper love for his country, and an assured confidence 
in the future of his race. 

This faith in his people and his country made the 
people trust Governor Wolcott, for they refuse their 
confidence to those who distrust them. But there 
were other and deeper reasons for their faith in him 
and for the love they bore him, which has been so 
strikingly manifested since his death. They recog- 
nized his ability, his eloquence, his industry, his con- 
scientiousness, his entire fitness for high place, his 
fearlessness when duty spoke to him. Yet it was 
something other than these great qualities which 
appealed to them most of all. He was a good man. 
I know the ready sneer which too often greets these 
words in this world of ours. If hypocrisy is the 
homage which vice pays to virtue, it is equally true 
that there is the hypocrisy of evil which is the 
tribute timid virtue pays to vice. Hence the ready 
sneer. Yet when one of the greatest geniuses of the 
last century and one of the bravest of men lay dying, 
the best he could find to say to a man he loved as 
his son was, '•' Be a good man, my dear." Was there 
ever a more tender or a better message from any 
human death-ded ? I think not, and I know well 



214 THREE GO^-ERXORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

that the goodness which "Walter Scott intended, and 
which we all reverence in our hearts even if we close 
our lips, was not that narrow self-righteousness 
which is as worthless as the tinkling cymbal, but the 
goodness which includes among its chief \'irtues a 
large and gentle charity toward others. 

Such was the goodness of Governor Wolcott. The 
bright mirror of his life was never dimmed by the 
faintest breath of reproach. "Wliat he seemed, that 
he was, and the people knew it. They knew, too, 
that he had courage ; I do not mean physical courage 
or moral courage, both of which were his, but just the 
plain courage which resists temptation by instinct, as 
a man defends his mother or his wife. He might 
make mistakes ; all successful men, doers of deeds, 
are sure to make them. " To err is human." But 
whatever chanced, the people of Massachusetts knew 
that there were certain things of which Roger Wol- 
cott was utterly incapable. Whatever he did or did 
not do, they knew that no mean, base motive, no 
personal or illicit gain, no degrading hope, could 
ever move him or ever be possible to him. '•' What- 
ever record leaped to light, he never could be 
shamed." The people knew all this, knew it by 
their wise instinct, and so they loved and trusted 
Governor Wolcott with a rare confidence and 
affection. 

They were proud of him, too, as they had good 



ROGER WOLCOTT 215 

reason to be. They liked to look upon such a gov- 
ernor, and they liked to think that the State on 
great occasions was represented beyond its own 
borders and in the eyes of the world by such a man. 
The feeling of the people of Massachusetts in regard 
to their governors is a strong and peculiar one. The 
State has a respect and an admiration for its chief 
magristrate which exist in no such deo^ree elsewhere. 
The sentiment is an honor to State and people. It is 
traditional and deep rooted. It is also well founded. 
We have had governors in this Commonwealth now 
for nearly three centuries. The list is a long one, 
but I do not believe that anywhere in the world is to 
be found a line of chief magistrates of equal length 
where you can discover so little that is unworthy, so 
little that is commonplace, so much that is eminent 
and honorable and of good report. The standard is 
a high one. The succession is a just pride to the 
State. To lower that standard would be grievous. 
To maintain it is much for any man to do. To lift 
it still higher is given to few. Yet this, I think, 
Roger Wolcott did. He added new lustre to that 
shining roll, and earned the right to be named 
among the chosen few where Andrew and Winthrop 
stand together. All this, again, the people knew 
well. Need we wonder that they loved Governor 
Wolcott, and that as they loved him so also they were 
proud of him ? The love and pride of the people 



216 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

whom he served, the devotion of the loyal friends so 
loved by him, an unblemished record, a life filled 
with good work done and with honorable achieve- 
ments which have passed now into the history of 
State and country, here are titles and distinctions 
with which those who most honor his memory may 
well be content. 

Yet the greatest is behind, for we can say with 
truth of Roger Wolcott that he is most highly 
to be praised and most fondly to be remembered 
for what he was rather than for what he did. 
Greater honor hath no man than this, to be loved 
and honored and held in memory, not so much 
for the deeds he did, or the great places he filled, 
or even for the work he wrought, as for what he 
himself was as a man. There is a type of man 
which we of the English-speaking people hold in 
especial honor, and like to think, justly, as I believe, 
peculiar to our race and history. It is a type which 
knows neither class nor rank. The man may be 
rich or poor, humble or great, the champion of vil- 
lage rights or the defender of a nation's liberties. 
But all such men have certain traits in common : 
simplicity of character, willingness to bear the bur- 
dens of the community, to do their public duty 
wherever it may lead, and always without personal 
ambition or thought of self. It may be John Brown, 
the poor Scotch carrier, shot down by Claverhouse as 



ROGER WOLCOTT 217 

he lifts his hands in prayer, or that other John 
Brown, walking to the gallows in Virginia, or 
Sydney on the scaffold, or Robert Shaw falling upon 
the slopes of Wagner. They may come to martyr- 
dom or death in battle, or they may never go beyond 
the peaceful service of their native town, or the 
higher service of poor and suffering humanity. 
Their light may shine before men, or do no more 
than warm and brighten some little corner. Com- 
manding ability or high genius may be given or 
denied to them, but great character must always be 
theirs and perfect readiness to serve their fellow-men, 
whether in the sheltered times of peace or in the 
hour of fierce trial, when the last sacrifice may be 
demanded. 

The great exemplars in history of the type I mean, 
and of which description is so difficult, are Hampden 
and Washington, the one a country gentleman of 
moderate talent and slight achievement, the other 
one of the greatest leaders, soldiers, and statesmen of 
all time ; but both alike in their ready self-sacrifice 
to the public weal, in their ideals of conduct, in their 
performance of duty without hope or desire of place 
or power, shine out upon the pages of history. It is 
one of the glories of our race that such men have 
never been lacking in our history, and in this noble 
company I think Roger Wolcott stands. May we 
not rejoice that in the nineteenth century New Eng- 



218 THREE GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS 

land could breed such a man, and must we not re- 
joice still more that a man of this fine type and 
nature commanded the affection, the trust, and the 
pride of this proud old State ? Profound gratitude 
for a life and character like this mingles with our 
sorrow as we stand by his untimely grave. 

" Lofty designs must close in like effects ; 
Loftily lying, 
Leave him — still loftier than the world suspects, 
Living and dying." 



THE TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF 
THE SENATE 

The action of the Senate upon the first Hay- 
Pauncefote treaty in December, 1900, gave rise to 
much discussion not only in regard to the merits of 
the treaty and of the Senate amendments, but also as 
to the rights and functions of the Senate as part of 
the treaty-making power. That there should be dif- 
ferences of opinion as to the merits of the questions 
involved in the treaty is entirely natural, but it 
seems strange that there should be any misapprehen- 
sion as to the functions and powers of the Senate, 
because those are not matters of opinion but well- 
established facts, simple in themselves and clearly 
defined both by law and precedent. Yet such mis- 
apprehension not only existed but was manifested 
here and there in the United States by statements 
and arguments as confident as they were erroneous. 
The English newspapers, as a rule, of course did 
not know anything about the powers of the Sen- 
ate, but seemed to have a general belief that the 
Senate amendments were in some way a gross 
breach of faith, a view not susceptible of explana- 



220 TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 

tion, but very soothing to those who held it, and 
quite characteristic. It is, however, a much more 
serious matter when misapprehension of this kind 
is found among those who are charged with the 
conduct of government. It is their duty and 
their business to understand thoroughly the in- 
stitutions, constitutional provisions, and political 
methods of other countries with which they are 
obliged to have dealings and to maintain relations. 
We have a right to expect that Lord Lansdowne, a 
statesman of long experience, who has held some of 
the highest offices under the British Crown, who has 
been advanced from the great post of Secretary of 
War to the still greater one of Secretary of State for 
Foreign Affairs, should understand thoroughly the 
constitutional provisions and modes of governmental 
procedure in the United States. Yet we find in Lord 
Lansdowne's note to Lord Pauncefote of February 
22, 1901, in reference to the Senate amendments the 
following statement : 

" The Clayton-Bulwer treaty is an international 
contract of unquestioned validity ; a contract which, 
according to well-established international usage, 
ought not to be abrogated or modified save with the 
consent of both the parties to the contract. His 
Majesty's Government find themselves confronted 
with a proposal communicated to them by the United 
States Government, without any previous attempt to 



TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 221 

ascertain their views, for the abrogation of the 
Clayton-Bulwer treaty." 

The meaning of this passage, taken as a whole, is 
not very clear, and in the last clause it contains at 
least one singular proposition. Admitting the inter- 
national usage to be as Lord Lansdowne states it, 
the Hay-Pauncefote negotiation conformed to it 
strictly. The sole purpose of the Hay-Pauncefote 
treaty was to modify, by amicable agreement, the 
Clayton-Bulwer treaty. So far as the Hay-Paunce- 
fote treaty went, it modified the Clayton-Bulwer 
treaty, and to that extent superseded it. How far it 
superseded it was a disputed point. It was strongly 
argued here that the Hay-Pauncefote treaty ex neces- 
sitate superseded entirely the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, 
and those Senators who advocated the insertion of 
the words " which is hereby superseded " were gen- 
erally held to be over-cautious. It was, in fact, this 
division of opinion as to the extent to which the 
Clayton-Bulwer treaty had been superseded which 
led to the adoption of the first Senate amendment, 
but Lord Lansdowne's note shows that those who 
desired a specific statement of the supersession of 
the Clayton-Bulwer treaty were right in their con- 
struction, that the supersession was not coiAplete as 
the Hay-Pauncefote treaty originally stood.^ 

1 The second Hay-Pauncefote treaty embodied all the principles 
contained in the Senate amendments to the first treaty, and was rati- 
fied, December 16, 1901, by a vote of 72 to 6. 



222 TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 

The point, however, to which I wish to draw at- 
tention here is quite different from the question of 
the supersession of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty in 
whole or in part by the first Hay-Pauncefote treaty, 
and is contained in the last sentence of the passage 
I have quoted. Lord Lansdowne there complains 
that his Government is confronted by a proposal 
from the United States without any previous at- 
tempt to ascertain their views. Here is where 
his misapprehension of our Constitution appears. 
If Mr. Hay had proposed to Lord Pauncefote, at 
any stage of their discussion, to insert clauses like 
the Senate amendments, the proposal might have 
been accepted or rejected, but no complaint would 
or could have been made that His Majesty's Gov- 
ernment was confronted by a proposal upon which 
their views had not been previously ascertained. 
Such propositions, coming from Mr. Hay, would 
have been entirely germane to the purpose of the 
negotiation, even if they had extended to a simple, 
wholly unconditional abrogation of the Clayton- 
Bulwer treaty, and would have been so recognized. 
What actually happened was that these propositions 
were offered at a later stage of the negotiation by 
the other part of the American treaty-making power 
in the only manner in which they could then be 
offered, and are therefore no more a subject of just 
complaint on account of the manner of their presen- 



TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 223 

tatiou than if they had been put forward at an 
earlier stage by Mr. Hay. If we follow the negotia- 
tion through its different phases, what has just been 
stated becomes apparent. Mr. Hay and Lord Paunce- 
fote open a negotiation for the modification of the 
Clayton-Bulwer treaty in such manner as to remove 
the obstacles which it may present to the construc- 
tion of the Central American canal by the United 
States. After due discussion they agree upon and 
sign a treaty. That agreement, so far as Great 
Britain is concerned, requires only the approval of 
the King for its completion, but with the United 
States the case is very different, because no treaty 
can be ratified by the President of the United States 
without the consent of the Senate. The treaty, so 
called, is therefore still inchoate, a mere project for 
a treaty, until the consent of the Senate has been 
given to it. That all treaties must be submitted to 
the Senate, and obtain the Senate's approval before 
they can be ratified and become binding upon the 
United States, was, we may assume, well known to 
Lord Lansdowne. But he does not seem to have 
realized that the Senate could properly continue the 
negotiation begun by Mr. Hay and Lord Pauncefote 
by offering new or modified propositions to His 
Majesty's Government. Of this he was clearly not 
informed, or he would not have made the complaint 
about being confronted with new propositions, as if 



224 TREATY-MxVKIXG TOWERS OF THE SENATE 

somethincr unusual and unfair had been done. No 
one expects the ''man in the street" or the London 
editor to remember that so long ago as 1795 the 
Senate made an entirely new amendment to the Jay- 
treaty and that England accepted it, or that so 
recently as March, 1900, the Senate made amend- 
ments to the treaty regulating the tenure and dis- 
position of the property of aliens and that England 
accepted them, or that it has been the uniform 
practice of the Senate to amend treaties, whenever 
it seemed their duty to do so._ But a British secre- 
tary of state for foreign affairs is, of course, fa- 
miliar with all these things and ought, therefore, 
to realize that the Senate can onl}^ present its views 
to a foreign government by formulating them in 
the shape of amendments, which the foreign gov- 
ernment may reject, or accept, or meet with counter 
propositions, but of which it has no more right to 
complain than it has to complain of the offer of 
any germane proposition at any other stage of the 
negotiation. 

With misapprehension like this existing not only 
in the British foreign office and the London Press, 
but also in the minds of one or two exceptionally 
"able " editors and correspondents in this coun- 
try, who spoke of the Senate's action in amendmg 
the Hay-Pauncefote treaty as a modern usurpation, 
it seems not amiss to explain briefly the nature 



TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 225 

and history of the treaty-making power in the 
United States. The explanation is easy. It rests, 
indeed, on constitutional provisions so simple and on 
precedents so notorious that one feels inclined to 
begin with an apology for stating anything at once 
so familiar and so rudimentary. Yet it would 
appear that the circumstances just set forth fully 
justify both the explanation of the law and the 
statement of the facts of history. 

The power to make treaties is at once a badge 
and an inherent right of every sovereign and inde- 
pendent nation. The thirteen American colonies of 
Great Britain, as part of the British Empire and 
as dependencies of the British Crown, were not 
sovereign nations and did not possess the treaty- 
making power. That power was vested in the 
British Crown, and when exercised the colonies were 
bound by the action and agreements of the British 
Government. When the thirteen colonies jointly 
and severally threw off their allegiance to the 
British Crown and became independent, all the 
usual rights of sovereignty which they had not 
before possessed vested, without restriction, in each 
one of the thirteen States. The treaty-making 
power was exercised accordingly by the Continental 
Congress, which represented all the States and where 
the vote was taken by States. Under the subse- 
quent Articles of Confederation the treaty-making 

15 



'2'2{j TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 

power could not be exercised by any State alone 
or by two or more States without the consent of 
the United States in Congress, and was vested in 
the Congress of the Confederation, where, as in the 
Continental Congress, each State had one vote, and 
where the assent of nine States w^as required to 
ratify a treaty. From this it will be observed that 
this sovereign right which had vested absolutely 
in each State, although it was confided to the Con- 
gress of the United States, was kept wholly within 
the control of the States as such, and was never 
permitted to become an executive function. This 
was the practice and this the precedent which the 
Convention found before them w^ien they met in 
Philadelphia in 1787 to frame a new constitution, 
and they showed no disposition to depart from 
either. The States were very jealous of their sover- 
eign rights, among which the power to make trea- 
ties was one of the most important, and having 
so recently emerged from a colonial condition, they 
were also very suspicious and very much afraid 
of dangerous foreign influences, especially in the 
making of treaties. At the outset, therefore, it 
seems to have been the universal opinion that the 
relations of the United States with other nations 
should be exclusively managed and controlled by 
the representatives of the States, as such, in the 
Senate. The strength and prevalence of this feeling 



TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 227 

are best shown by the various plans for a consti- 
tution presented to the Convention. The Virginian 
plan so called was embodied in resolutions offered 
by Mr. Randolph, which proposed to enlarge and 
amend the Articles of Confederation and passed 
over without mention the treaty-making power, 
accepting apparently the existing system which 
vested it in the States voting as such through 
their representatives. The plan offered by Mr. 
Pinckney provided that : 

"The Senate shall have the sole and exclusive 
power to declare war, and to make treaties, and 
to appoint ambassadors and other ministers to 
foreign nations, and judges of the Supreme Court." 

The New Jersey plan offered by Mr. Patterson, 
which aimed only at a mild amendment of the 
Articles of Confederation, left the treaty-making 
power, as under the Confederation, wholly within the 
control of the States voting as such in Congress. 

Hamilton, who went to the other extreme from 
the New Jersey plan, gave the treaty-making power 
in his scheme to the President and the Senate, but 
conferred on the Senate alone the power to declare 
war. 

All these plans, as well as the general resolutions 
agreed upon after weeks of debate, went to a com- 
mittee of detail, which, on August 6, reported, through 
Mr. Rutledge, the first draft of the Constitution. 



228 TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 

Section 1 of Article 9 of this first draft provided 
that " The Senate of the United States shall have 
power to make treaties and to appoint ambassadors 
and judges of the Supreme Court." 

The manner in which this clause, as reported 
by the committee of detail, was modified is best 
described by Mr. George Ticknor Curtis in his " Con- 
stitutional History of the United States": i 

The power to make treaties, which had been given to 
the Senate byHhe committee of detail, and which was 
afterwards transferred to the President, to be exercised 
^vith the advice and consent of two-thirds of the Senators 
present, was thus modified on account of the changes 
which the plan of government had undergone, and which 
have been previously explained. The power to declare 
war having been vested in the whole legislature, it was 
necessary to provide the mode in which a war was to be 
terminated. As the President was to be the organ of 
communication with other governments, and as he would 
be the general guardian of the national interests, the nego- 
tiation of a treaty of peace, and of all other treaties, was 
necessarily confided to him. But as treaties would not 
only involve the general interests of the nation, but might 
touch the particular interests of individual States, and 
whatever their effect, were to be part of the supreme law 
of the land, it was necessary to give to the Senators, 
as the direct representatives of States, a concurrent au- 
thority with the President over the relations to be affected 
by them. The rule of ratification suggested by the com- 
mittee to whom this subject was last confided was that 

1 Vol. i. pp. 579-581, last edition. 



TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 229 

a treaty might be sanctioned by two-thirds of the Senators 
present, but not by a smaller number. A question was 
made, however, and much considered, whether treaties of 
peace ought not to be subjected to a different rule. One 
suggestion was that the Senate ought to have power to 
make treaties of peace without the concurrence of the 
President on account of his possible interest in the con- 
tinuance of a war from which he might derive power and 
importance. But an objection, strenuously urged, was 
that if the power to make a treaty of peace were confided 
to the Senate alone, and a majority or two-thirds of the 
whole Senate were to be required to make such a treaty, 
the difficulty of obtaining peace would be so great that the 
legislature would be unwilling to make war on account 
of the fisheries, the navigation of the Mississippi, and other 
important objects of the Union. On the other hand, it 
was said that a majority of the States might be a minority 
of the people of the United States, and that the representa- 
tives of a minority of the nation ought not to have power 
to decide the conditions of peace. 

The result of these various objections was a determina- 
tion on the part of a large majority of the States not to 
make treaties of peace an exception to the rule, but to 
provide a uniform rule for the ratification of all treaties. 
The rule of the Confederation, which had required the 
assent of nine States in Congress to every treaty or 
alliance, had been found to work great inconvenience, as 
any rule must do which should give to a minority of 
States power to control the foreign relations of the coun- 
try. The rule established by the Constitution, while it 
gives to every State an opportunity to be present and to 
vote, requires no positive quorum of the Senate for the 
ratification of a treaty ; it simply demands that the treaty 
shall receive the assent of two-thirds of all the members 



230 TREATY-MAKING POWER^ OF THE SENATE 

who may be present. The theory of the- Constitution 
undoubtedly is that the President represents the jjeople 
of the United States generally and the Senators represent 
their respective States, so that by the concurrence which 
the rule thus requires the necessity for a fixed quorum 
of the States is avoided and the operations of tliis function 
of the Government are greatly facilitated and simplified. 
The adoption also of that part of the rule which provides 
that the Senate may either " advise or consent," enables 
that body so far to initiate a treaty as to propose one for 
the consideration of the President — although such is not 
the general practice. 

The obvious fact that the President must be the 
representative of the country in all dealings with 
foreign nations, and that the Senate in its very 
nature could not, like the Chief Executive, initiate 
and conduct negotiations, compelled the convention 
to confer upon him an equal share in the power 
to make treaties. This was an immense concession 
by the States, and they had no idea of giving up 
their ultimate control to a president elected by the 
people generally. Here, therefore, is the reason for 
the provision of the Constitution which makes the 
consent of the Senate by a two-thirds majority 
necessary to the ratification of any treaty projected 
or prepared by the President. The required assent 
of the Senate is the reservation to the States of 
an equal share in the sovereign power of making 
treaties which before the adoption of the Constitu- 



TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 231 

tion was theirs without limit or restriction. The 
treaty clause, as finally agreed to by the conven- 
tion and ratified by the States, is as follows : " He 
[the President] shall have power, by and with the 
advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, 
provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur, 
and he shall nominate and by and with the advice 
and consent of the Senate shall appoint ambassa- 
dors," etc. 

I have quoted the provision in regard to appoint- 
ments in order to define more fully the previous one 
relating to treaties. The use of the words " advice 
and consent" in both provisions has given rise to 
misapprehensions in some minds, and even in one 
instance at least to the astounding proposition that 
because the Senate cannot amend a nomination 
by striking out the name sent in by the President 
and inserting another, it therefore, by analogy, can- 
not amend a treaty. It is for this reason well 
to note that the carefully phrased section gives the 
President absolute and unrestricted right to nomi- 
nate, and the Senate can only ad^dse and consent 
to the appointment of, a given person. All right to 
interfere in the remotest degree with the power of 
nomination and the consequent power of selection 
is wholly taken from the Senate. Very different 
is the wording in the treaty clause. There the 
words "by and with the advice and consent of" 



232 TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 

come in after the words "shall have power" and 
before the power referred to is defined. The " advice 
and consent of the Senate" are therefore coextensive 
with the "power" conferred on the President, which 
is " to make treaties/' and apply to the entire proc- 
ess of treaty making. The States in the convention 
of 1787 agreed to share the treaty power with the 
President created by the Constitution, but they 
never thought of resigning it, or of retaining any- 
thing less than they gave. 

The Senate, being primarily a legislative body, 
cannot in the nature of things initiate a negotia- 
tion with another nation, for they have no authority 
to appoint or to receive ambassadors or ministers. 
But in every other respect, under the language of 
the Constitution and in the intent of the framers, 
they stand on a perfect equality with the President 
in the making of treaties. They have an undoubted 
right to recommend either that a negotiation be 
entered upon or that it be not undertaken, and 
I shall show presently that this right has been 
exercised and recognized in both directions. As a 
matter of course, the President would not be bound 
by a resolution declaring against opening a negotia- 
tion, but such a resolution passed by a two-thirds 
vote would probably be effective and would serve 
to stop any proposed negotiation, as we shall see 
was the case under President Lincoln. In the same 



TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 233 

way the Senate has the right to advise the President 
to enter upon a negotiation, and has exercised this 
right more than once. Here, again, the President 
is not bound to comply with the resohition, for 
his power is equal and co-ordinate with that of 
the Senate, but such action on the part of the 
Senate, no doubt, would always have due weight. 
That this right to advise or disapprove the opening 
of negotiations has been very rarely exercised is 
unquestionably true in practice, and the practice 
is both sound and wise; but the right remains 
none the less, just as the Constitution gave it, not 
impaired in any way by the fact that it has been 
but little used. 

The right of the Senate to share in treaty making 
at any stage has always been fully recognized, both 
by the Senate and the Executive, not only at the 
beginning of the Government, when the President 
and many Senators were drawn from among the 
framers of the Constitution and were, therefore, 
familiar with their intentions, but at all periods 
since. A brief review of some of the messages 
of the Presidents and of certain resolutions of the 
Senate will show better than any description the 
relations between the two branches of the treaty- 
making power in the United States, the uniform 
interpretation of the Constitution in this respect, 
and the precedents which have been established. 



234 TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 

On August 21, 1789, President Washington noti- 
fied the Senate that he would meet with them on 
the following day to advise with them as to the 
terms of a treaty to be negotiated with the Southern 
Indians, On August 22, in accordance with this 
notice, the President came into the Senate Chamber, 
attended by General Knox, and laid before the 
Senate a statement of facts, together with certain 
questions, in regard to our relations to the Indians 
of the Southern district, upon which he asked the 
advice of the Senate. On August 24, 1789, he 
appeared again in the Senate Chamber with General 
Knox, and the discussion of our relations with the 
Southern Indians was resumed. The Senate finally 
voted on the questions put to it by the President, 
and in that way gave him their advice.^ 

^ During the first years of its existence the Senate sat with closed 
doors, and there is no record of any of its debates. The only official 
records we possess are the dry entries of the Journal, stating the 
questions put and the votes. For the first two years, however, we 
have an account of the doings of the Senate in the diary of William 
Maclay, a Senator from Pennsylvania during the period from 1789 to 
1791. In that diary (pages 129 to 13.3) there is a full description of 
what happened upon the only occasion when a President personally 
met with the Senate to consider a treaty, a mode of consideration 
which was undoubtedly contemplated as the most suitable at the 
time of the framing of the Constitution. In reading Mr. Maclay 's 
narrative it is well to remember that he was one of those persons 
who are never satisfied in regard to their own integrity unless they 
impugn the conduct and suspect the motives of every one else, and 
especially of those who differ with them in opinion. Mr. Maclay was 
exceedingly hostile to Washington and could not appreciate him. 
His opinions as to men are curious and untrustworthy, but his state- 



TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 235 

On August 11, 1790, President "Washington, in a 
written message, asked whether it was the judgment 
of the Senate that overtures should be made to the 



uients of facts, aud as to what actually occurred, may as a rule 
be accepted, and are of peculiar interest, because we possess no other 
account of Senate debates at that period. 

In the same connection there is an interesting story told in the 
diary of John Quincy Adams which is worth repeating, and which 
throws an interesting light upon the incident. 

" Mr. Crawford told twice over the story of President Washington's 
having at an early period of his Administration gone to the Senate 
with a project of a treaty to be negotiated and been present at their 
deliberations upon it. They debated it and proposed alterations, 
so that when Washington left the Senate Chamber he said he would 
be damned if he ever went there again. And ever since that time 
treaties have been negotiated by the Executive before submitting 
them to the consideration of the Senate. 

" The President said he had come into the Senate about eighteen 
months after the first organization of the present Government, and 
then heard that something like this had occurred. 

" Crawford then repeated the story, varying the words, so as to 
say that Washington swore he would never go to the Senate again." 
(Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, vol. vi. p. 427.) 

Washington's attempt to confer with the Senate in this direct way 
was so obviously inconvenient, and the discussion upon the propo- 
sitions was so annoying to the President on the one side, while the 
restraint of the President's presence was so much felt by the Senate 
on the other, that personal deliberation between the Chief Executive 
and his constitutional advisers was then and there abandoned. 

But although given up in practice, the original theory that the Presi- 
dent at his pleasure was to consult personally with the Senate upon 
executive business was never laid aside. In the first set of rules 
adopted by the Senate in 1789 the idea was so much a matter of 
course, apparently, that no provision is made for the forms to be 
observed when the President meets with the Senate in executive session. 
In the revised Rules adopted ^larch 26, 1806, rule 34 treating of 
nominations provides that : " When the President of the United States 
shall meet the Senate in the Senate chamber, the President of the Sen- 
ate shall have a chair on the floor, be considered as the head of the 



236 TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 

Cherokees to arrange a new boundary ; if so, wliat 
compensation should be made, and whether the 
United States should stipulate solemnly to guarantee 
the new boundary. The Senate by resolution replied 
to these inquiries in the affirmative. 

On January 19, 1791, President Washington laid 
before the Senate the representation of the charge 
d'affaires of France in regard to certain acts of Con- 
gress imposing extra tonnage on foreign vessels, and 
asked the advice of the Senate as to the answer he 
should make. On February 26, 1791, the Senate, by 
resolution, replied to this message, stating their 
opinion as to the meaning of the fifth article of the 

Senate, and his chair shall be assigned to the President of the United 
States." 

Rule 35 further provides that : " All questions shall be put by the 
President of the Senate either in the presence or absence of the Presi- 
dent of the United States." 

In the revision of the rules adopted January 3, 1820, the provision 
of Rule 35 in the revision of 1806 was dropped. The provision of 
rule 34 of 1806 was retained and remained in the Senate rules until 
1877, when it was changed to read as follows : " When the President 
of the United States shall meet the Senate in the Senate chamber for 
the consideration of executive business, he shall have a seat on the 
right of the chair." The provision in this form has continued to the 
present day and is at this time one of the rules of the Senate. Thus 
it will be seen that although the practice has been given up; the 
original theory of the framers of the Constitution has never been aban- 
doned. The rule of the Senate, now nearly a century old, is a full 
and significant recognition of the right of the President to consult in 
person with his constitutional advisers, and of the absolute equality of 
the Senate and the executive in all matters of executive business iu 
which the Senate shares under the Constitution. 



TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 237 

treaty in relation to the acts of Congress which had 
been called in question, and advising that an answer 
be given to the charge d'affaires of France, defending 
the construction put upon the treaty by the Senate. 

On February 14, 1791, a message was sent in 
which illustrates in a very interesting way how close 
the relations were between the Senate and the Presi- 
dent in all matters relating to treaties, and how com- 
pletely Washington recognized the right of the 
Senate to advise with him in regard to every matter 
connected with our foreign relations. In this mes- 
sage he explained his sending Gouverneur Morris in 
an unofficial character to England in order to learn 
whether it were possible to open negotiations for a 
treaty, and with the message he sent various letters, 
so that the Senate might be fully informed as to all 
this business, which was, in its nature, entirely secret 
and unofficial. 

On November 10, 1791, the Senate ratified the 
treaty made by Governor Blount with the Cherokee 
Indians, and the report of the committee begins in 
this way : " That they have examined the said 
treaty and find it strictly conformable to the instruc- 
tions given by the President, that these instructions 
were founded on the advice and consent of the Sen- 
ate on the 11th of August, 1790," etc. 

It is not necessary to multiply instances under 
our first President. These cases which have been 



238 TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 

quoted show how Washington interpreted the Con- 
stitution which he had so largely helped to frame. 
It is clear that in his opinion, and in that of the 
Senate, which does not appear to have been contro- 
verted by anybody, the powers of the Senate were 
exactly equal to those of the President in the making 
of treaties, and that they were entitled to share with 
him at all stages of a negotiation. 

April 16, 1794, Washington consulted the Senate 
upon a much more important matter than any of 
those to which I have referred, for on that day he 
sent in the name of John Jay to be an envoy ex- 
traordinary to England in addition to the minister 
already there. He gives in the message his reasons 
for doing this, and in that way caused the Senate to 
pass not only upon the appointment of Mr. Jay 
but also upon the policy which that appointment 
involved. 

May 31, 1797, President Adams, in nominating 
his special commission to France, followed the exam- 
ple of Washington when he nominated Jay, and 
explained his reasons for the appointment of this 
commission, in that way taking the advice of the 
Senate as to opening the negotiations at all. 

December 6, 1797, President Adams, in submit- 
ting an Indian deed, which was the form taken by 
the treaty, suggested that it be conditionally rati- 
fied ; that is, that the Senate should provide that the 



TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 239 

treaty should not become binding until the President 
was satisfied as to the investment of the money, and 
the resolution was put in that form. This is inter- 
esting, because it is the first case where the President 
himself suggests an amendment to be made by the 
Senate. 

March 6, 1798, in ratifying the treaty with Tunis, 
where the Senate had made an amendment, they 
recommended that the President enter into friendly 
negotiations with the Government of Tunis in 
regard to the disputed article. 

February 6, 1797, President Adams nominated 
Rufus King minister to Russia, and stated that it 
was done for the purpose of making a treaty of 
amity and commerce with that country. 

When President Adams re-opened negotiations 
with France, an action which signalized the fatal 
breach in the Federalist party, he sent in the name 
of William Vans Murray to be minister to France, 
explained that it was to renew the negotiation, and 
stated further what instructions he should give if 
Murray was confirmed by the Senate. So much 
opposition was aroused by this step that in order to 
secure the assent of the Senate to his policy Mr. 
Adams sent in the names of Chief Justice Ellsworth 
and Patrick Henry to be joined with Murray in the 
commission, and stated more explicitly the conditions 
on which alone he would allow them to embark. 



240 TliKATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 

President Jefferson, on January 11, 1803, sent in 
a message nominating Livingston and Monroe to nego- 
tiate with France, and Charles Pinckney and Monroe 
to negotiate with Spain, in regard to Louisiana, setting 
forth fully his reasons for opening negotiations on 
this subject, so that the Senate in advising and con- 
senting to the appointments assented also to the 
policy which they involved. 

President Madison, on May 29, 1813, sent in a 
nomination for a minister to Sweden, to open diplo- 
matic relations with that country. The Senate, on 
June 14, appointed a committee to confer with the 
President upon the subject. Madison declined the 
conference on the ground that a committee could not 
confer directly with the Executive, but only through 
a Department. His statement of the relations of the 
President and Senate in his message of July 6, 1813, 
is interesting as showing how he, one of the principal 
framers of the Constitution, construed it in this 
respect : 

Without entering into a general review of the relations 
in which the Constitution has placed the several depart- 
ments of the Government to each other, it will suffice to 
remark that the Executive and Senate, in the cases of 
appointments to office and of treaties, are to be considered 
as independent of and co-ordinate with each other. If they 
agree, the appointments or treaties are made ; if the Senate 
disagree, they fail. If the Senate wish information pre- 
vious to their final decision, the practice, keeping in view 



TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 241 

the constitutional relations of tlie Senate and tlie Execu- 
tive, has been cither to request the Executive to furnish it 
or to refer the subject to a committee of their body to com- 
municate, either formally or informally, with the head of 
the proper Dex)artment. The appointment of a committee 
of the Senate to confer immediately with the Executive 
himself appears to lose sight of the co-ordinate relation be- 
tween the Executive and the Senate which the Constitution 
has established, and which ought therefore to be maintained. 

April 6, 1818, President Monroe laid before the 
Senate correspondence with Great Britain making an 
arrangement as to naval armaments on the Great 
Lakes. He asked the Senate to decide whether this 
was a matter which the Executive was competent to 
settle alone, and if they thought not, then he asked 
for their advice and consent to making the agreement. 

President Jackson, on March 6, 1829, asked the 
consent of the Senate to make with the charge 
d'affaires of Prussia an exchange of ratifications of 
the treaty with that country, the time for the ex- 
change having passed before the Prussian ratification 
was received. The request was repeated on January 
26, 1831, under similar circumstances, in regard to 
the Austrian treaty.^ 

May 6, 1830, President Jackson, in a message 
relating to a treaty proposed by the Choctaw Indians, 

^ This became the universal practice in cases where tho time for 
exchanging ratifications had expired by accident, or otherwise, before 
the exchange had been effected. It is not necessary to cite other 
instances. 



242 TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 

asked the Senate to share in the negotiations in the 
following words : " Will the Senate advise the con- 
clusion of a treaty with the Choctaw Nation accord- 
ing to the terms which they propose ? Or will the 
Senate advise the conclusion of a treaty with that 
tribe as modified by the alterations suggested by me ? 
If not, what further alteration or modification will 
the Senate propose ? " President Jackson then goes 
on to give his reasons for thus consulting the Sen- 
ate. The passage is of great interest because it not 
only states the change of practice which had taken 
place since Washington's time in regard to consult- 
ing the Senate before or during a negotiation, but 
recognizes fully that although reasons of convenience 
and expediency had led to the abandonment of con- 
sultation with the Senate as a body prior to a nego- 
tiation, yet it was an undoubted constitutional right 
of the President to so consult the Senate, and of the 
Senate to take part, if it saw fit, at any stage of a 
negotiation. President Jackson says : 

I am fully aware that in thus resorting to the early practice 
of the Government, by asking the previous advice of the 
Senate in the discharge of this portion of my duties, I am 
departing from a long and for many years unbroken usage 
in similar cases. But being satisfied that this resort is con- 
sistent with the provisions of the Constitution, that it is 
strongly recommended in this instance by considerations of 
expediency, and that the reasons which have led to the 
observance of a different practice, though very cogent in 



TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 243 

negotiation with foreign nations, do not apply with equal 
force to those made with Indian tribes, I flatter myself that 
it will not meet the disapprobation of the Senate. 

Under President John Quincy Adams a convention 
had been made with Great Britain, referring to the 
decision of the King of the Netherlands the points of 
dijfference between the two nations as to our north- 
eastern boundary line. On January 10, 1831, the 
King of the Netherlands rendered his decision, 
against which our minister at The Hague protested. 
On December 7, 1831, President Jackson submitted 
the decision and protest to the Senate, asking 
whether they would advise submission to the opinion 
of the arbiter and consent to its execution. The 
President took occasion to say in this connection : " I 
had always determined, whatever might have been 
the result of the examination by the sovereign 
arbiter, to have submitted the same to the Senate for 
their advice before I executed or rejected it." 

On March 3, 1835, the Senate passed the following 
resolution : 

Resolved^ That the President of the United States be re- 
spectfully requested to consider the expediency of opening 
negotiations with the governments of other nations, and 
particularly of the governments of Central America and 
New Grenada, for the purpose of effectually protecting, by 
suitable treaty stipulations with them, such individuals or 
companies as may undertake to open a communication be- 



244 TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 

tween the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by the construction 
of a ship canal across the isthmus which connects North 
and South America, and of securing forever, by such stipu- 
lations, the free and equal right of navigating such canal to 
all such nations, on the payment of such reasonable tolls as 
may be established, to compensate the capitalists who may 
engage in such undertaking and complete the work. 

January 9, 1837, President Jackson replied to 
this resolution, stating that in accordance with its 
terms an agent had been sent to Central America, 
but that from his report it was apparent that the 
conditions were not such as to warrant entering 
upon negotiations for treaties relating to a ship 
canal. 

President Van Buren, on June 7, 1838, sent in 
a message announcing that he intended to authorize 
our charge d'affaires to Peru to go to Ecuador and, 
as agent of the United States, negotiate a treaty with 
that Republic. Before doing so, however, he thought 
it proper, in strict observance of the rights of the 
Senate, to ask their opinion as to the exercise of 
such a power by the Executive in opening negotia- 
tions and diplomatic relations with a foreign state. 

President Polk, on June 10, 1846, sent to the 
Senate a proposal in the form of a convention in 
regard to the Oregon boundary submitted by the 
British minister, together with a protocol of the pro- 
ceedings, and on this he asked the advice of the 



TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 245 

Senate as to what action should be taken. The 
message then continues as follows: 

In the early periods of the Government the opinion and 
advice of the Senate were often taken in advance upon 
important questions of our foreign policy. General Wash- 
ington repeatedly consulted the Senate and asked their 
previous advice upon pending negotiations with foreign 
powers, and the Senate in every instance responded to his 
call by giving their advice, to which he always conformed 
his action. This practice, though rarely resorted to in 
later times, was, in my judgment, eminently wise, and 
may, on occasions of great importance, be properly revived. 
The Senate are a branch of the treaty-making power, and 
by consulting them in advance of his own action upon 
important measures of foreign policy, which may ultimately 
come before them for their consideration, the President 
secures harmony of action between that body and himself. 
The Senate are, moreover, a branch of the war-making 
power, and it may be eminently proper for the Executive 
to take the opinion and advice of that body in advance 
upon any great question which may involve in its deci- 
sion the issue of peace or war. 

August 4, 1846, President Polk, by message, con- 
sulted the Senate as to entering upon peace nego- 
tiations with Mexico and advancing to that country 
a portion of the money to be paid as consideration 
for the cession of territory. 

July 28, 1848, President Polk sent to the Senate 
a message explaining his refusal to ratify an extra- 
dition treaty with Prussia, to which the Senate had 



246 TREATY-lSrAKTNG POWERS OF THE SENATE 

agreed. When the treaty was sent to the Senate, 
on December 16, 1845, the President stated his ob- 
jections to the third article. The Senate ratified the 
treaty with the third article unamended, and there- 
upon, and because the Senate had not amended or 
stricken out the third article, the President refused 
to ratify the treaty himself. 

April 22, 1850, President Taylor invited the Senate 
to amend either the Clayton-Bulwer treaty or that 
with Nicaragua, so that they might conform with 
each other. 

February 13, 1852, President Fillmore pointed out 
certain objectionable clauses in the Swiss treaty and 
asked the Senate to amend them. 

June 26, 1852, President Fillmore sent in a letter 
from Mr. Webster, calling attention to the non-action 
of the Senate upon an extradition treaty with 
Mexico, and asked that, if it was thought objec- 
tionable in any particular, amendments might be 
made to remove the objections, such amendments 
to be proposed by the Executive to the Mexican 
Government. 

February 10, 1854, President Pierce sent to the 
Senate the Gadsden treaty, signed by the pleni- 
potentiaries on December 30, 1853, and with it 
certain amendments which he recommended to the 
Senate for adoption before ratification. It would be 
difficult to find a better example than this, not merely 



TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 247 

of the right of the Senate to amend, but of the fact 
that Senate amendments are simply a continuance of 
the negotiation begun by the President. 

President Buchanan, on February 12, 1861, asked 
the advice of the Senate as to accepting the award 
made by commissioners under the convention with 
Paraguay, following therein the precedent set by 
President Jackson. 

February 21, 1861, President Buchanan asked the 
advice of the Senate as to entering into a negotia- 
tion with Great Britain for a treaty of arbitration in 
regard to a controverted point in the Ashburton- 
Webster treaty of 1846. His own words are : "The 
precise questions I submit are three : Will the Senate 
approve a treaty," etc. 

March 16, 1861, President Lincoln, in his first 
message to the Senate, repeated the questions of 
his predecessor as to entering upon this negotiation 
for an arbitration with Great Britain, and said : " I 
find no reason to disapprove the course of my prede- 
cessor on this important matter, but, on the contrary, 
I not only shall receive the advice of the Senate 
therein, but 'I respectfully ask the Senate for their 
advice on the three questions before recited." 

December 17, 1861, President Lincoln sent to the 
Senate a draft of a convention proposed by the 
Mexican Government, and asked, not for ratifica- 
tion, but merely for their advice upon it. 



248 TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 

January 24, 1862, lie asked again for advice as 
to entering upon the treaty for a loan to Mexico, so 
that he might instruct Mr. Corwin in accordance 
with the views of the Senate. 

February 25, 1862, the Senate passed a resolu- 
tion to the effect "that it is not advisable to nego- 
tiate a treaty that will require the United States 
to assume any portion of the principal or interest 
of the debt of Mexico, or that will require the 
concurrence of European powers." Meantime Mr. 
Corwin, not having received instructions, had made 
and signed two treaties for the loan, and President 
Lincoln, on sending them in on June 23, 1862, said 
in his message : " The action of the Senate is, of 
course, conclusive against acceptance of the treaties 
on my part," but the importance of the subject 
was such that he asked for the further advice of 
the Senate upon it. 

March 5, 1862, President Lincoln sent a message 
repeating President Buchanan's request for the 
advice of the Senate as to accepting the Paraguayan 
award. 

February 5, 1863, President Lincoln sent in for 
ratification a convention with Peru, and suggested 
an amendment which he wished to have made by 
the Senate. 

January 15, 1869, President Johnson sent in a 
protocol agreed upon with Great Britain, and asked 



TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 249 

the advice of the Senate as to entering upon a nego- 
tiation for a convention based upon the protocol 
submitted. 

April 5, 1871, President Grant transmitted a de- 
spatch from our minister to the Hawaiian Islands, 
and asked for the views of the Senate as to the 
policy to be pursued. 

May 13, 1872, President Grant sent a message to the 
Senate relatins^ to differences which had arisen under 
the treaty of Washington, and said : " I respectfully 
invite the attention of the Senate to the proposed 
article submitted by the British Government with 
the object of removing the differences which seem 
to threaten the prosecution of the arbitration, and 
request an expression by the Senate of their disposi- 
tion in regard to advising and consenting to the 
formal adoption of an article such as is proposed 
by the British Government. 

" The Senate is aware that the consultation with 
that body in advance of entering into agreements 
with foreign states has many precedents. In the 
early days of the Republic, General Washington 
repeatedly asked their advice upon pending ques- 
tions with such powers. The most important recent 
precedent is that of the Oregon boundary treaty, 
in 1846. 

" The importance of the results hanging upon the 
present state of the treaty with Great Britain leads 



250 TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 

me to follow these former precedents, and to desire 
the counsel of the Senate in advance of agreeing 
to the proposal of Great Britain." 

June 18, 1874, President Grant sent in a draft 
of a reciprocity treaty relating to Canada, and asked 
the Senate if they would concur in such a treaty 
if negotiated. 

President Arthur, on June 9, 1884, asked the 
advice of the Senate as to directing negotiations 
to proceed with the King of Hawaii for the exten- 
sion of the existing reciprocity treaty with the 
Hawaiian Islands. 

March 3, 1888, the Senate passed a resolution ask- 
ing President Cleveland to open negotiations with 
China for the regulation of immigration with that 
country. President Cleveland replied that such 
negotiations had been undertaken. 

From these various examples it will be seen that 
the Senate has been consulted at all stages of nego- 
tiations by Presidents of all parties, from Washing- 
ton to Arthur. It will also be observed that the 
right to recommend a negotiation by resolution was 
exercised in 1835 and again in 1888, and was un- 
questioned by either Jackson or Cleveland, who 
were probably more unfriendly to the Senate and 
more unlikely to accede to any extension of Senate 
prerogatives than any Presidents we have ever had. 
It will be further noted that the Senate in 1862 



TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 251 

advised against the Mexican negotiation, and that 
President Lincohi frankly accepted their decision, 
and did not even ask that the treaties which had 
been actually made meantime should be considered 
with a view to ratification. 

The power of the Senate to amend or to ratify 
conditionally is of course included in the larger 
powers expressly granted by the Constitution to 
reject or confirm. It would have never occurred 
to me that any one who had read the Constitution 
and who possessed even the most superficial ac- 
quaintance with the history of the United States 
could doubt the right of the Senate to amend. But 
within the last year^ I have seen this question raised, 
not jocosely, so far as one could see, but quite seri- 
ously. It may be well, therefore, to point out very 
briefly the law and the facts as to the power of 
the Senate to amend or alter treaties. 

In 1795 the Senate amended the Jay treaty, rati- 
fying it on condition that the twelfth article should 
be suspended. Washington accepted their action 
without a word of comment, as if it were a matter 
of course, and John Marshall, in his Life of Wash- 
ington, has treated the Senate's action on that 
memorable occasion in the same way. From that 
day to this, from the Jay treaty in 1795 to the alien 
property treaty with Great Britain in 1900, the 

1 1900-1901. 



252 TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 

Senate has amended treaties, and foreign govern- 
ments, recognizing our system and the propriety 
of the Senate's action, have accepted the amend- 
ments. A glance at the passages which have been 
cited from the Messages of the Presidents is enough 
to disclose the fact that no President has ever 
questioned the right of the Senate to amend, and 
that several Presidents have invited the Senate 
to make amendments as the best method of con- 
tinuing the negotiations. In this case, however, 
we are not left to deduce the obvious right of 
the Senate to amend, from an unbroken line of 
precedents and the unquestioning recognition of the 
right by the Chief Executive. On this point we 
have a direct and unanimous declaration by the 
Supreme Court of the United States. In Haver v. 
Yaker, Mr. Justice Davis, delivering the opinion 
of the court, said : '' In this country a treaty is 
something more than a contract, for the Federal 
Constitution declares it to be the law of the land. 
If so, before it can become a law, the Senate, in 
whom rests the authority to ratify it, must agree 
to it. But the Senate are not required to adopt 
or reject it as a whole, but may modify or amend 
it, as was done with the treaty under considera- 
tion." ^ This decision of the court is conclusive, 

1 Wallace, pp. 34 and 35. Mr. Rawle, in his " View of the Con- 
stitution of the United States," p. 64, says: "The Senate may 



TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 253 

if any doubt had ever existed as to the amendment 
powers of the Senate; but the following list of 
treaties, amended by the Senate and afterwards 
ratified by the countries with which they were 
made, exhibits the uniform and unquestioned prac- 
tice which has prevailed since the foundation of our 
Government : 

Algiers, 1795 ; Argentine, 1885 (amity and commerce), 
1897 (extradition) ; Austria, 1856 ; Baden, 1857 ; Bavaria, 
1845, 1853; Belgium, 1858, 1880 (consular); Bolivia, 1859, 
1900 (extradition) ; Brunswick and Luneburg, 1854 ; 
Chile, 1900 (extradition) ; China, 1868, 1887 (exclusion) ; 
Colombia, 1857 ; New Granada, 1888 (extradition) ; Congo, 
1891 (relations) ; Costa Rica, 1852, 1861 ; France, 1778, 
1843, 1858, 1886 (clauns), 1892 (extradition); Great 
Britain, 1794, 1815, 1889 (extradition), 1891 (Bering Sea), 
1896 (Bering claims), 1899 (real property) ; Guatemala, 
1870 (amity and commerce) ; Hawaii, 1875 (reciprocity), 
1886 (reciprocity) ; Italy, 1868 ; Japan, 1886 (extradition), 
1894 (extradition), 1894 (commerce and navigation) ; 
Mexico, 1843, 1848, 1853, 1861, 1868, 1883 (reciprocity), 
1885 (reciprocity), 1886 (boundary), 1888 (frontier), 1890 
(boundary); Netherlands, 1887 (extradition) ; Nicaragua, 
1859, 1870 (amity and commerce) ; Orange Free State, 

wholly reject it, or they may ratify it in part, or recommend addi- 
tional or explanatory articles, which, if the President approves of 
them, again become the subject of negotiation between him and the 
foreign power; and, finally, when the whole receives the consent of 
the Senate, and the ratifications are exchanged between the respec- 
tive Governments, the treaty becomes obligatory on both nations." 
Mr. Rawlev's entire chapter on the treaty-making power merits care- 
ful consideration in this connection. 



254 TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 

1896 (extradition) ; Peru, 1863, 1887 (commerce and navi- 
gation), 1899 (extradition) ; Russia, 1889 (extradition) ; 
Saxony, 1845; Siam, 1856 ; Sweden, 1816, 1869 (naturaliza- 
tion) ; Switzerland, 1847, 1850, 1900 (extradition) ; Tunis, 
1797, Turkey, 1830, 1874 (extradition) ; Two Sicilies, 
1855; Venezuela, 1886 (claims). 

From this list it appears that there have been 68 
treaties amended by the Senate and afterwards 
ratified. 

The results of the preceding inquiry can be easily 
summarized. Practice and precedent, the action of 
the Senate and of the Presidents, and the decision of 
the Supreme Court show that the power of the Sen- 
ate in making treaties has always been held, as 
the Constitution intended, to be equal to and co- 
ordinate with that of the President, except in the 
initiation of a negotiation, which can of necessity 
only be undertaken by the President alone. The 
Senate has the right to recommend entering upon a 
negotiation, or the reverse ; but this right it has 
wisely refrained from exercising, except upon rare 
occasions. The Senate has the right to amend, and 
this right it has always exercised largely and freely. 
It is also clear that any action taken by the Senate 
is a part of the negotiation, just as much so as the 
action of the President through the Secretary of 
State. In other words, the action of the Senate 
upon a treaty is not merely to give sanction to the 



TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 255 

treaty, but is an integral part of the treaty making, 
and may be taken at any stage of a negotiation. 

It has been frequently said of late that the Senate 
in the matter of treaties has been extending its 
powers and usurping rights which do not properly 
belong to it. That the power of the Senate has 
grown during the past century is beyond doubt, but 
it has not grown at all in the matter of treaties. On 
the contrary, the Senate now habitually leaves in 
abeyance rights as to treaty-making which at the 
beginning of the Government it freely exercised, and 
it has shown in this great department of executive 
government both wisdom and moderation in the 
assertion of its constitutional powers. 

This is not the place to discuss the abstract merits 
of the constitutional provisions as to the making of 
treaties. Under a popular government like ours it 
would be neither possible nor safe to leave the vast 
powers of treaty-making exclusively in the hands of 
a single person. Some control over the Executive in 
this regard must be placed in the Congress, and the 
framers of the Constitution intrusted it to the repre- 
sentatives of the States. That they acted wisely 
cannot be questioned, even if the requirement of the 
two-thirds vote for ratification is held to be a too 
narrow restriction. These, however, are considera- 
tions of no practical importance, and after all only 
concern ourselves. Our system of treaty-making is 



256 TREATY-MAKING POWERS OF THE SENATE 

established by the Constitution and has been made 
clear by long practice and uniform precedents. The 
American people understand it, and those who con- 
duct the government of other countries are bound to 
understand it, too, when they enter upon negotia- 
tions with us. There is no excuse for any misappre- 
hension. It is well also that the representatives of 
other nations should remember, whether they like 
our system or not, that in the observance of treaties 
during the last one hundred and twenty-five years 
there is not a nation in Europe which has been so 
exact as the United States, nor one which has a 
record so free from examples of the abrogation of 
treaties at the pleasure of one of the signers alone. 



SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 

Somewhat more than a year ago ^ Eduard Suess, 
the distinguished Austrian geologist, eminent alike 
in science and in public life, celebrated his seventieth 
birthday. To a gathering of his friends who had 
waited upon him to present their congratulations, he 
made an address in which he discussed the political 
and economic future of the nations of the earth. 
The theme was very appropriate to the speaker, for 
modern history in these latest days has been engaged 
in demonstrating more and more surely and clearly 
that the discovery, possession, and development of 
mineral deposits have played always a leading and 
often a controlling part in the rise and fall of states 
and empires, in the growth and decay of civilizations, 
and in the movements of trade and the accumulation 
of wealth. This phase of history was, therefore, the 
one naturally taken by Herr Suess for his text, and 
in the course of his discussion he is reported to have 
said that, owing to their mineral resources, the future 
belonged to three nations, — the United States, Russia, 
and China, but with a long interval between the first 
and second ; and that the supremacy of the nations 

1 This article was published in Scribner's Magazine for April, 1902. 
17 



258 SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 

of western Europe and of England was over, because 
their natural resources, heavily drawn upon for many 
centuries, and never very large, were rapidly ap- 
proaching exhaustion. To the geologist a thousand 
years are, indeed, but as yesterday, and that which 
he speaks of as immediate frequently seems to the 
average man extremely remote. Many years, no 
doubt, must elapse before the mineral resources of 
England and western Europe actually give out or 
become unprofitable from difficulty in working. Yet 
the end is pressing sufficiently close to cause Eng- 
land and Europe to watch the progress of the United 
States with an interest hitherto unknown, and which, 
whether it finds expression in serious discussion, in 
sneers, or in denunciations, is none the less real and 
none the less tremulous with apprehension of the 
rival at whom they have been wont to scoff. We, on 
the other hand, do not fret ourselves overmuch about 
the nations we are overtaking and passing in the 
race for trade, commerce, and economic supremacy. 
We observe all they do, with much care, but without 
anxiety. To us the great country placed next behind 
us by the geologist is a subject of keener interest, 
although no cause for present fear. It is true that, 
owing to the superior energy of the American people, 
a long interval still separates us from Russia, in the 
prediction of Herr Suess. But none the less Russia 
has the natural resources, — she has, like ourselves, a 



SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 259 

large future ; her natural resources are still unde- 
veloped. The nations which have hitherto held eco- 
nomic supremacy, but whose natural resources have 
begun to contract and decline, demand, no doubt, 
our most watchful attention, but need not excite un- 
due apprehension. Ultimate peril, if there is any, 
can only come from a nation of the future, with pos- 
sibilities as yet unmeasured and unknown. 

To every reflecting American, therefore, Russia is 
of absorbing interest, not only on account of the 
friendship she has frequently shown us, but because 
she is potentially an economic rival more formidable 
than any other organized nation. We know that 
somewhere in that vast territory which extends from 
the Baltic to the Pacific and from the Arctic Ocean 
to the Black Sea, there is found every variety of 
soil and climate and every kind of mineral wealth. 
The coal, the iron, the gold, and the copper may not 
be so compactly or so conveniently placed as in the 
United States, but they are all there. That which it 
concerns us to know is how far this great country 
and its resources are now developed, whether they 
can be fully and effectively developed by the Russian 
people, and, if so, how soon they will reach the point 
of dangerous and destructive rivalry. These were 
the questions to which I sought reply when I 
travelled in Russia last summer;^ and on the prin- 

1 The summer of 1901. 



260 SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 

ciple of seeking and finding, I received a number of 
very vivid impressions which seemed to furnish in 
some degree answers to the questions I had in mind. 
I shall try here to set down certain of those impres- 
sions, with the hope that they may help us to under- 
stand the present and gauge the future conditions 
with some accuracy, for upon our knowledge of these 
conditions our success in the great economic struggle, 
upon which we have entered so victoriously and so 
cheerfully, largely depends. 

We came into Russia from Vienna by way of 
Poland, and stopped at Warsaw. Here was a large 
city full of business activity, curiously devoid of any 
sign of age more remote than the days of " Augustus, 
the Physically Strong," and with new quarters which 
closely resembled Chicago. Everywhere there was 
bustle, life, energy ; very clearly an economic people 
with abundant capacity for the competition of the 
present time. And over this large, thriving, moving, 
rather commonplace community lies ever the shadow 
of 80,000 armed men, for that is the garrison needed, 
apparently, to maintain the peace for which Warsaw 
has become proverbial. The people are Polish and 
Jewish, the soldiers are Russians. In other words, 
the economic people here are not Russians, and their 
obvious capacity for modern business throws no light 
upon Russia unless by way of contrast. But from 
another point of view the relative positions of the 



SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 261 

two races are full of instruction, and embody very 
strikingly the great truth that economic capacity is 
futile unless it is sustained by the nobler abilities 
which enable a people to rule and administer and to 
display that social efficiency in war, peace, and gov- 
ernment without which all else is vain. It is well 
worth while to pause a moment as one looks at War- 
saw, and remember how great a part the Poles have 
played in history. They were the barrier of Europe 
against the Turk. Only three centuries ago they 
were in Moscow, pulling down and setting up Tsars. 
They were, and are, a gallant people, brilliant in 
war, versatile, clever, interesting. They were, and 
are, far cleverer, far more attractive, far quicker than 
the Russians ; but they were unable to govern them- 
selves or others, and the Russians have shown them- 
selves able to do both. They were anarchic, weakly 
unable to combine and to make sacrifices for a com- 
mon end. The Russians were orderly, organized, con- 
centrated. One is irresistibly reminded by Poland of 
Bagehot's famous proposition that in great governing 
races there is always a certain amount of stupidity, 
and that " while the Romans were praetors, the 
Greeks were barbers," — an illustration which he 
might have supplemented by one equally apt, drawn 
from contemporary Warsaw. But none the less, 
however we may explain it, and however much we 
may dislike the political system and methods by 



262 SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 

which Poland is controlled, the fact remains that the 
Russians govern Poland, which could not govern 
itself, as well as much other vast territory and many 
other hostile or alien peoples. We may object to 
their way of doing it, but we must concede at the 
outset that the Russians have the governing capacity, 
without which no race and no nation can aspire to 
political power or hope for material success. The 
manner may be harsh, but the Russians can main- 
tain order, with which failure is likely enough, but 
without which nothing is possible, except anarchy 
and chaos, hateful above all things to gods and men 
and Thomas Carlyle. 

The railroad from Warsaw to Moscow follows 
almost exactly the route of Napoleon and the Grand 
Army. The country is still the same as in his day, 
except for the railroad itself; and as the dreary 
plain, broken only by vast stretches of monotonous 
birch and pine forests, slips by, hour after hour and 
mile after mile, the greatness of the man who crossed 
it with an army looms ever larger on the imagination. 
The military genius of Napoleon seems more marvel- 
lous than ever before, while the lone and level plain, 
the marshes, the woods, the chill and sluggish rivers, 
silent witnesses of his great march, stare back at the 
gazer as the train runs slowly onward. It was this 
same country that destroyed his army on its retreat 
after the ruinous and inexplicable delay at Moscow 



SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 263 

which insured a defeat that could have been so 
easily avoided. The victory of the desolate wind- 
swept plains over the only soldier of modern times 
worthy to rank with Caesar, Alexander, and Hanni- 
bal suggests some interesting reflections. The Rus- 
sians have expanded their borders and added to their 
possessions more than any people in modern times, 
except those who speak English. The Tsar holds 
sway to-day over a territory as compact as the United 
States and more than twice as large. Throwing out 
the Arctic wastes of Canadian North America, Russia 
in Europe and Asia has nearly as large an area as 
that of all the widely scattered British possessions. 
Yet it was not until late in the sixteenth century, 
less than four hundred years ago, that Russia finally 
shook herself free from Tartar dominion. Two hun- 
dred more years elapsed before her political organiza- 
tion became consolidated and coherent, free from the 
intermeddling of Poles and Swedes. Her great ex- 
tension of territory has practically taken place within 
two hundred years; that is, since the accession of 
Peter the Great. When it is remembered that the 
world movement of the English-speaking people began 
nearly a hundred years earlier, with the first settle- 
ment of America and the opening of the East India 
trade, the length and rapidity of the strides Russia 
has made in the acquisition of territory and the 
spread of her empire can be quickly appreciated. 



264 SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 

Yet a very conspicuous fact about Russian history is 
that she has never been a conquering nation, in the 
usual military sense. She has never swept, swift 
and victorious, over vast spaces of the earth, like 
the Tartar hordes which held her in bondage for 
two hundred and fifty years, and whose scattered 
remnants are now her peaceful subjects. Her best 
known successes in war have been, as a rule, defen- 
sive victories, where country and climate were the 
allies of her soldiers, as when she ruined Charles, of 
Sweden, at Pultava, or destroyed the Grand Army 
of Napoleon, pursuing his retreating columns over 
snow and ice, more deadly and destructive than all 
her soldiers and artillery. She has steadily pushed 
back the Turks in many wars of varying fortune, but 
the empire has not been made by military conquerors 
of the type of Alexander or Cagsar or Napoleon. 
Suvaroff, alone, had large success in the offensive, 
outside his own country, and after his recall the Rus- 
sian army was beaten by Massena at Zurich. 

The Russians, indeed, have not been over-success- 
ful in war. They have always fought with dogged 
stubbornness, but military genius seems to have been 
lacking. It is true that they have slowly driven 
back the Turks, and yet in their very last war 
Turkey, crippled as she was, inflicted many bloody 
repulses upon them and stayed the march to Con- 
stantinople. Nevertheless, with the exception of the 



SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 265 

English-speaking race, no people have acquired terri- 
tory so rapidly and steadily, or held it more firmly. 
No matter what checks they have received, the Rus- 
sian movement has gone persistently forward. They 
have spread to the Baltic on the north and to the 
Black Sea on the south. They have crossed the 
Urals and carried their empire to the Pacific. Even 
now they are grasping Manchuria and have opened 
their way to the Persian Gulf, despite the fact that 
England, if we may believe Captain Mahan, has been 
increasing her prestige and improving her military 
strength in South Africa. They hold Poland, Fin- 
land, and the German Baltic provinces in an unwill- 
ing but complete subjection. They have brought 
the Cossacks, that wild blend of Tartar and Greek 
with outlawed Poles and Russians, to an entire and 
satisfactory loyalty, while the still wilder tribes of 
Central Asia accept their dominion quietly, and rest 
content under their rule. The people of the South 
and East, with a less advanced civilization, welcome 
Russian government, while those of the western 
border, more civilized and more intelligent than their 
masters, detest it, but both alike are held quiet and 
submissive in an iron grip. Here, then, is a nation 
which has shown two great and vital qualities of an 
imperial and ruling race, — the ability to govern and 
the ability to expand and conquer, as well as to con- 
solidate and hold its conquests. 



266 SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 

Twenty years ago it would have been admitted 
unquestioningly that a nation with such attributes 
and such achievements in the recent past must 
soon become, not only a portentous rival to 
all other nations, but that, except for some very 
unforeseen contingency, it was certain to attain to 
supremacy, if not to absolute domination in the 
affairs of the world. Since that time, however, a 
new school of historians has arisen, of which Mr. 
Brooks Adams, in his " Law of Civilization and 
Decay," was the pioneer and first exponent, and 
which has set forth and sustained the theory that 
the rise and fall of states and civilizations, nations 
and races, are governed by processes of evolution 
as sure as those applied by Darwin to the world 
of nature, and less definite only because our knowl- 
edge of the highly complicated facts is inferior and 
our opportunities of observation more limited. This 
new school further holds with Karl Marx that in 
these processes of evolution the controlling forces, 
in ancient and modern times alike, have been eco- 
nomic. This doctrine, if carried to extremes, may 
easily become as misleading as any other ; for the 
one thing absolutely certain about human history is 
that, in the infinite complications of human motives 
and passions, no single theory and no one simple 
truth can alone explain all the doings of mankind 
and all the events of the past. The economic forces 



SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 267 

have been so utterly overlooked hitherto, and have 
really played such a great and, at times, dominant 
part in the history of mankind, that it is easy in 
reaction against their undeserved neglect to go too 
far with them. Properly understood, they give light 
in many places where before there was darkness ; 
they often show continuity, where hitherto blind 
chance seemed to reign ; they demonstrate the proc- 
esses of evolution and they explain much, but taken 
alone they do not explain everything. A nation 
may produce great economic capacity, and yet fail. 
Even the towering genius of Hannibal could not 
save the Carthaginians, a race of high economic 
ability, from defeat by a people at that time of 
low economic capacity, but endowed with greater 
tenacity of purpose, greater ability to stand punish- 
ment, and superior quality in war. The Huns swept 
over Europe in conquest and disappeared, for they 
had neither organizing, administrative, nor economic 
capabilities. The nation which can only fight, no 
matter how brilliantly, will not endure. Like Hun 
and Tartar, it will go down. The nation which is 
purely economic, no matter how much it wins in 
commerce or how vast the wealth it piles up, cannot 
long survive ; for some fighting people whom it 
has beaten in trade will destroy it in war. Carthage 
fell before the advance of Rome. A people may 
combine fighting and economic qualities, and yet 



268 SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 

break down because they cannot organize and gov- 
ern. Poland furnishes a sad example of such a 
case. A nation may be able to fight, trade, and 
organize, and yet, if unable to expand and spread, 
will not endure. Spain rose to domination under 
her statesmen and soldiers, and was brought to the 
ground by Holland, grotesquely unequal as an 
antagonist, because Holland could not only fight des- 
perately, but by marvellous economic talents turned 
the tide of wealth to Amsterdam and ruined her 
mighty foe, who could not make, but could only 
spend, money. The Dutch in turn failed to expand, 
and after a period of great power dropped out of 
the race and lost their place among the leading 
nations. 

It is not enough, therefore, that a nation should 
have shown, as Russia has shown, the power to 
conquer territory, to fight, govern, and expand. 
She must also prove that she is gifted with the 
economic qualities, never so essential as now when 
the economic forces are more relentless and controll- 
ing than ever before in history. Does she possess 
these qualities, or can she develop them ? On the 
answer to these questions her future depends. To 
seek to make this momentous answer complete 
would be a life-work for one man; and when the 
life had been given, the task would probably remain 
unfinished. But indications of the right reply, 



SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 269 

foundations for just conclusions, contributions to 
the final settlement of the problem, these can be 
gathered everywhere, in the history of the past, 
in the facts and statistics of the present ; they can 
even be discovered in the first vivid impressions 
of the passing traveller, if he will take the trouble 
to look at the scenes and people before him with 
considerate eyes, and formulate what he perceives, 
so that it shall be intelligible to others. 

To a native of western Europe or of the United 
States, the first feeling which masters him in Russia 
is that he has come among a people whose funda- 
mental ideas, whose theory of life, and whose con- 
trolling motives of action are utterly alien to his 
own. There is no common ground, no common 
starting-place, no common premise of thought and 
action. The fact that the Russians on the surface 
and in external things are like us, only accentuates 
the underlying and essential differences. In all the 
outward forms of social life, in the higher education, 
in methods of intercourse both public and private, 
they do not differ from us, and Peter's imitative 
policy has in all these things been carried to com- 
pletion. That the man in the breech-clout, that 
the wearer of the turban or the pigtail, should be 
wholly alien to us is so obvious that we are not 
startled. But that men who in the world of society 
and in the cities dress like us and have our manners 



270 SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 

should be at bottom so utterly different, gives a 
sharp and emphatic jar to all one's preconceived 
ideas. 

It is always difficult to state in few words the 
radical differences which separate one people from 
another in thought and habits, in the conduct and 
ideals of life. But here the past helps us to a 
definition at once broad and suggestive. We are 
the children of Rome, and the Russians are the 
children of Byzantium. Between Rome, republican 
or imperial, and its Greek successor at Byzantium 
there was a great gulf fixed. One was Latin, the 
other was the Greek of decadence and subjection. 
One was Western, the other was Eastern. Ideas 
inherited from Rome permeated western Europe and 
were brought thence to America. From Rome comes 
our conception of patriotism, to take but a single 
example, that love of country which made Rome 
what she was in her great days. The patriotism of 
the Russian applies only to the Tsar. In Glinka's 
fine and most characteristic opera, " A Life for the 
Tsar," the old peasant who saves his sovereign has 
no word for Russia, but only for the Tsar. Give 
your life, give everything for the Tsar ! is his cry ; 
and the songs which move the audience to profound 
excitement are passionate appeals ending in prayer 
to sacrifice all for the preservation of the Tsar. 
That which stirs an American, an Englishman, 



SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 271 

a Frenchman, or a German to heroic deeds is devo- 
tion to his native land, to his fatherland, to that 
ideal entity which is known as " country." That 
which moves the Russian is devotion to a man who, 
next to God, commands his religious faith and 
stands to him for his country. The first conception 
is Roman, and of the "Western World. The second 
is Oriental, and pertains to the subtle Greek intel- 
lect in its decadence. Nor is this feeling the per- 
sonal loyalty of the Cavalier and the Jacobite to the 
Stuarts, or of the French noblesse to the house 
of Bourbon. The loyalty of the Russian is not to 
Alexander or to Nicholas or to the Romanoffs, 
a family of mixed blood, chiefly German and less 
than three hundred years ago of the rank of boyars. 
The intense Russian loyalty is to the crowned and 
consecrated Tsar, whoever he may be, the head 
of the State and the head of the Church, next to 
God in their prayers. Superadded to the deep 
religious feeling for the Tsar is that due to the 
fact that when Peter came to the throne commerce 
and industry belonged to the Tsar, like everything 
else, and in the words of Peter's latest biographer, 
Waliszewski, " The Tsar is not only master, he is, 
in the most absolute sense of the word, proprietor of 
his country and his people." Whatever changes 
or modifications came from the "great reformer," 
or have come since, have been in details. The great 



272 SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 

central idea that the Tsar not only represents God 
on earth, but that he owns country and people, 
is still dominant and controlling. In other words, 
the State, in the person of the Tsar, is owner and 
master, and the result is a military and religious so- 
cialism which is economically a wasteful and clumsy 
system, utterly unable to compete against the intense 
individualism of other countries working through 
highly perfected and economical organizations. 

The same difference of feeling as to the rela- 
tions of men may be seen in everything. The 
religious obeisance of the Russians, for example, 
with its crouching attitude and the head touching 
the pavement, is thoroughly Oriental, and never 
was known in any Western Church. One feels at 
every step the great gulf fixed between those who 
inherit the ideas of Roman law, liberty, and 
patriotism, and those who still hold to the vslavish 
doctrines of the Greek Empire of Byzantium. 

In the famous opera of Glinka, which has just 
been mentioned, one catches, indeed, the keynote of 
the Russian system. The hero is not a prince or a 
boyar or a victorious general, but a simple moujik, 
and the other great figure is the Tsar, who never 
appears on the stage at all, but upon whose fate the 
entire play turns. The moujik is Russia, and on the 
moujik rests the government of the Tsar. So long as 
the moujik remains as he is, the Russian autocracy 



SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 273 

can neither be touched nor shaken. The outbreaks 
of Nihilists and students are mere froth upon the 
surface of society. While the moujik nils the army 
and believes in the Tsar, all the efforts of the discon- 
tented and the agitators are as vain and empty as 
the passing wind.^ 

But as the moujik is Russia, it is on him and his 
qualities that not only the government, but the fu- 
ture of the country depends. Is he able to take a 
successful part in the economic competition of the 
time ? If he is, Russia will succeed, and the most 
prosperous and powerful of nations may dread 
the rivalry. If he is not, Russia will ultimately 
fail. It is true that in the Finns and the Poles, 
in the Germans of the Baltic Provinces and the 
Tartars of the South — remnants of the hordes 
which once held the country to tribute — we have 
industrial and economic people capable of economic 
development, and even now largely in possession of 
the business and capital of the empire. But these 
outlying races are in a hopeless minority, and, 
wdth the exception of the Tartars, they, in various 
degrees, detest their masters ; they have no control, 
and never will have : in a word, they are not Rus- 

1 The serious indication in the recent disorders in Russia is that 
workingmen and peasants have been involved, and that in certain 
cases the soldiers have shown signs of revolt. If these symptoms 
spread and become general, it will show that the moujik is at last 
affected, and then and not till then great changes will come. 



274 SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 

sian and the spirit and soul of Russia are not in 
them. There is no need to waste time over them. 
If we would try to read, however dimly, the future 
of Russia, we must look to the Russian alone, and 
really to the Russian moujik ; for the educated upper 
class, cultivated into an external imitation of west- 
ern Europe, are not Russia, and have power and 
meaning only when they represent and are in close 
accord with the vast inert mass of the population 
beneath them, as was the case alike with the Russian 
Peter and the German Catherine, the two great 
rulers and builders of the empire. 

What does the moujik reveal, then, to the eyes of 
the passing traveller ? I saw him and his country 
first, as we slowly crossed the vast plain which lies 
between Warsaw and Moscow. In that long, mo- 
notonous stretch of eight hundred miles, one notes 
that there are only three cities of any size, — Minsk, 
with 91,000 inhabitants ; Brest-Litovsk, with 48,000 ; 
and Smolensk, with 46,000. There are only six 
towns, including these three, of over 10,000 inhabi- 
tants, and only nine with more than 5,000. This is 
an old part of the empire, some of the cities having 
been important in the Middle Ages, but there has 
been no industrial growth, no concentration of labor 
and capital, no organization like that of the West. 
Yet the country is all occupied. The farming vil- 
lages appear at intervals. They are composed of 



SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 275 

log houses huddled together, tumble-down, dirty, the 
chinks stuffed with clay. They closely resemble the 
worst cabins of the early American pioneers which 
gave place to the clapboarded or brick house in a 
generation, so quickly, indeed, that except in the 
region of the negro and in remote districts they have 
largely disappeared from our Southern and Western 
country in the course of a century's advance. But 
the Russians have not advanced beyond the log-cabin 
stage in eight hundred years. In some of the larger 
villages one sees occasionally two or three houses 
sheathed in boards and looking like an American 
frame house, but these are the exceptions. It is true 
that Russia is a country of wood and without build- 
ing stone, but they could build frame houses, and 
they have abundance of brick-clay. Yet there they are 
in the rudest pioneer stage in this long-settled region 
(Moscow was nearly all wood less than two hundred 
years ago), and there they have remained in rural 
districts, while the centuries have slipped by un- 
heeded. The eager desire for improvement in mate- 
rial condition, so characteristic of the people who 
settled the United States, seems to be lacking in the 
Russian peasant, for even the most adverse circum- 
stances could not account for such widespread absence 
of progress. Such immobility cannot arise from out- 
side causes, but must have its roots deep down in the 
nature of the race. 



276 SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 

Even more striking than the primitive character 
of the villages is the absence of roads, of which, 
in White Russia, at least, there are apparently none 
better than casual cart-tracks. One can hardly 
believe, as the watch indicates approach to the jour- 
ney's end, that the train is drawing near a great 
capital of a million inhabitants and a thousand years 
old. The blank, roadless plain goes on up to the 
edge of Moscow, which has no suburbs: and even 
when one drives to a pleasure-resort only five miles 
from the city, that which passes for a road would be 
thought bad in the most remote mountain districts 
of the southern Alleghanies. One is also struck in 
this part of Russia by the absence of any improved 
implements of agriculture. A horse-plough is the 
only advance made over hand labor, the reaping, 
gleaning, and threshing all being done by hand and 
chiefly by women and girls, the men being largely 
away in the army or earning money in the cities as 
cabmen or laborers or in small and simple industries. 
In southern Russia American agricultural machinery 
has been introduced and is extensively used ; but 
White Russia, lying between Warsaw and Moscow, 
is apparently destitute of such improvements, al- 
though its inferiority of soil and vast extent of 
arable land render improved methods of cultivation 
peculiarly necessary, from the economic point of 



SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 277 

Far stronger, however, than any impression re- 
ceived from the villages or farms as to the nature of 
the Russian is that conveyed by his religious attitude. 
Watch the people at church during some of its noble 
and always imposing ceremonies, at the shrines of 
saints or in the holy places of the Kremlin on a feast- 
day, and you recognize at once that you are in the 
presence of a religious faith of a kind unknown to 
western Europe and to America, whether Roman 
Catholic or Protestant. Here one feels at once that 
he is in contact with a faith very touching and beau- 
tiful to see, which never reasons and has never 
recognized reason or sought even to dispute its argu- 
ments. The devotion is simple, blind, and so un- 
questioning that the onlooker of another creed finds 
no intolerance apparent anywhere, and never is dis- 
posed to think that the forms so sedulously observed 
are in the least perfunctory or mechanical among the 
mass of the people. It is the extreme faith of the 
Middle Ages in full life, but without the ferocity, 
the blind fears, or the asceticism which disfigured 
that period in western Europe. While the Russian 
people hold to their present faith, the Tsar, who is 
part of their worship and belief, has an authority 
founded on a rock which nothing can shake. The 
hero of Glinka's opera, the scene of which is laid in 
the seventeenth century, wears the dress of the First 
Crusade ; and however glaring the anachronism his- 



278 SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 

torically, the sentiment is true of Russia to-day and 
always, for the faith of the people is of the time of 
the crusaders, and could be stimulated even now to 
similar outbreaks. 

The question which confronts those who try to 
read the future is, what effect will religious faith of 
this kind have ultimately in the struggle of the pres- 
ent day ? We know that when the darkness of the 
Middle Ages broke, when our ancestors again discov- 
ered themselves and the world, when they read once 
more in the story of ancient times what civilization 
had been, the dominion of fear passed away, and the 
economic forces rose again out of their long twilight, 
and assumed their pristine influence in states and 
empires. We know that the nations which most 
thoroughly and readily adapted themselves to the 
changed conditions climbed most quickly to wealth 
and power, and those who failed in adaptation went 
to the wall. France, Germany, Holland, and, above 
all, the English-speaking people pushed to the front 
and strove for supremacy. The Spaniard, nearest 
to-day to the mediaeval man and least able to meet 
the new demands, sank steadily until he lost even 
his great qualities of war and statecraft which had 
made the vast empire of Charles V., and so went 
down in hopeless wreck. The Spaniards were an old 
people, who were unable to survive as a great power 
in new conditions. The Russians are a new people 



SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 279 

SO far as Western civilization is concerned, but the 
inexorable economic forces are upon them now, and 
they must meet them or fall back. It may be asked 
what practical effect the religion of the Russians has, 
economically speaking. Two examples will suffice. 
The Russian calendar is a fortnight behindhand, and 
is a constant annoyance, disturbance, and hindrance 
to the conduct of commerce. The Government is 
anxious to bring Russian dates into harmony with 
facts and with the rest of the world, but does not 
dare to do so because popular feeling would be out- 
raged by dropping a fortnight, which would efface in 
one year some saints' days and feast-days and would 
disarrange the rest. When Peter changed the Rus- 
sian date from the year 7208, dating from the crea- 
tion of the world, to 1700 a.d., bold as he was he did 
not dare to accept the Gregorian Calendar, and 
among his many reforms this partial one required as 
much audacity as any. The same feeling which 
Peter thus outraged exists to-day as strongly as ever, 
and the Russian will not sacrifice to business con- 
venience a sentiment about the calendar of no real 
moment whatever to his faith or his religion. 

This feeling for the existing calendar grows from 
the profound popular reverence and affection for the 
saints' days and holy-days, and here the effect in 
practical affairs is much more marked. In addition 
to the fifty-two Sundays, Russia has about thirty- 



280 SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 

nine holidays or feast-days of the Church. They 
are kept as rigidly almost as a London Sunday. 
Business ceases, except in nooks and corners, while 
drunkenness, the bane of the Russian, cripples work 
for twenty-four or forty-eight hours after each feast. 
In round numbers, there are thirty days on which 
the Western World works while the Russian stands 
idle. Consider the enormous production of thirty 
days in the United States alone ; look at the statis- 
tics, and you realize at once that in this single 
point Russia labors under a wellnigh hopeless 
disadvantage. 

But the matter of holidays is but a single concrete 
example of a state of mind. Far more serious and 
deep-rooted is the mental attitude of the men who 
make and who are the Russian Empire, who sustain 
the great military and religious socialism which 
that empire really is, toward the principles of busi- 
ness which are not merely the truisms, but the 
ordinary instincts of the Western nations. Two 
little anecdotes will illustrate my meaning. 

A secretary of embassy took a house one summer 
outside St. Petersburg, and, driving to the station 
the first day, when he paid the driver his twenty- 
five kopecks, said : " I shall go into St. Petersburg 
and come out daily now for a month, and I should 
like to make an arrangement with you to take 
me back and forth from the station every day." 



SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 281 

The reply was prompt : " If I am to take you back 
and forth from the station every day I shall have 
to charge you more than twenty-five kopecks, which 
you paid me for a single trip this morning." 

Again, a foreign minister was in the habit of 
having books bound two or three at a time. Just 
before his departure he wished to have some fifty 
books bound in the same way; sent for the binder 
and asked him at what price he would bind fifty 
volumes. The reply was : " If you are going to 
have as many as fifty bound, I shall have to charge 
you more per volume than for two or three." 

It may be said these are isolated instances, but 
they are none the less typical of a mental attitude 
among the masses of the people upon economic 
questions which is suggestive in the highest degree. 
It is safe to say that it would be impossible to 
find a huckster in the streets of London, Paris, or 
New York who would not at once, and instinctively, 
make a reduction in price to any one who would buy 
a quantity instead of a single one of his petty 
wares. The same ignorance of the simplest laws 
of successful business runs through everything in 
Russia, from the use of beads strung on wires to 
count with in the shops and banks, to the clumsy 
fee system for the payment of public officials. 

When one passes from the habits and customs 
which can be easily noted by the observant travel- 



282 SOME mPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 

ler, to the broad facts open to all who will 
study books, statistics, and economic development, 
the indications furnished in the daily life of the 
people receive a profound and startling confirma- 
tion. Take, for example, the railroad system, probably 
more vital to national success, in the conditions of 
the present day, than any other single element. 
When George Stephenson devised the locomotive 
and railroads began, it was as open to Russia as to 
any other country to develop railways in the empire, 
but now, nearly three-quarters of a century after 
Stephenson's day, Russia, with more than 8,000,000 
square miles of territory, has barely 35,000 miles 
of railway, while the United States, with 3,000,000 
square miles of territory, excluding Alaska, has 
200,000 miles.^ It would be difficult to find a 
stronger expression of the comparative economic 
energy of two great nations than is conveyed by 
this single and striking example. One sees con- 
stantly in the magazines articles, especially by 
English writers, expressing the most profound ad- 
miration at the completion of the Siberian Railway, 
and yet nothing could be more convincing of the 

^ The Almanach de Gotha for 1902 gives the railroad mileage of 
Russia as follows : 

Russia in Europe 28,042 miles 

Russia in Asia 4,710 miles 

Finland - . 1,757 miles 

The " United States Railway Gazette " estimates the railway mile- 
age of the United States at the present time as 199,378 miles. 



SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 283 

very low economic force of Russia than that same 
railroad. That it is an important work, that it 
will help Russia in the East, both economically and 
for military purposes, cannot be questioned, and yet 
to wonder at the building of the Trans-Siberian Rail- 
road is only possible if we fail to look below the 
surface. 

Russia has been occupied for more than ten years 
in building 6,000 miles of railway over a very easy 
country for the most part, and that railway is not 
yet completed. The turn around Lake Baikal, which 
involves serious difficulties, is not yet made, and will 
not be for some years. The Manchurian branch is 
not yet complete. But assume that we may call the 
railway completed, what do we find ? It has taken 
Russia ten years to build 6,000 miles of railroad. 
The annual construction of railways in the United 
States has twice reached 6,000 miles. The Russian 
road has cost in the easiest part $30,000 a mile, and 
in Siberia it has probably cost, with the equipment, 
$50,000 a mile. Yet, despite this enormous and 
wasteful expenditure, they have only got a single 
track laid with rails so light that they must relay it 
from one end to the other. It is as yet a complete 
failure commerciall}'-. It is not paying its expenses. 
If it was a private corporation it would have gone 
into bankruptcy. It has been paid for in loans 
which have helped to sink Russia in debt, and is 



284 SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 

maintained out of taxes imposed upon the people. 
In one year the people of the United States, by 
private enterprise, without any aid from the Govern- 
ment or without any taxes upon the people, have 
built as much as Kussia has built in ten years, 
and most of it is profitable and has been constructed 
at a cost which would make Russian competition 
commercially impossible. The Trans-Siberian Rail- 
road, when its statistics are examined, is a most 
startling exhibition of economic inefficiency. 

There is no need here to enter into a discussion 
of the general economic condition of Russia. The 
railroads alone tell the story. They are totally 
inadequate to the business of the country. Most 
of them have been laid for a military or strategic 
purpose, and this has thrown many of the industrial 
towns of Russia out of the line of communication 
and has made them eccentric. This meagre railway 
system is also totally inadequate for distribution or 
transportation. Famines recur yearly in different 
parts of Russia, and yet the total wheat crop is 
more than enough to feed her whole people, but 
the means of transportation make intercommunica- 
tion and relief impossible. 

The truth is that the Russians are a primitive 
people, and at the same time an old people ; that 
is, they have been long established in their present 
territory. It is important to remember these two 



SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 285 

facts, because it shows that they have not been 
able to grow out of their primitive ideas during 
a long period of time, which indicates that they 
are, as a people, incapable of the economic advance- 
ment or of the adaptation to modern conditions 
by which alone they can hope to survive and win 
ultimate success in the struggle. A primitive people 
is economically wasteful, and the Russian system 
is wasteful and inefficient to the last degree. With 
a vast country and unlimited resources, the problem 
before Russia is that of development. Can they 
develop the enormous property which is theirs? 
Thus far they have failed to do so, except in 
a comparatively slight degree, and there is no 
present indication that they will be able to develop 
their country with their existing methods. It would 
be rash to say of any people that they cannot be 
turned into an economic and industrial nation, es- 
pecially when they are as patient, docile, stubborn 
of courage, and tenacious of purpose as the Russians ; 
but it is certain that it would take many generations 
to bring this about with the Russians under the 
most favorable conditions, and it certainly will never 
come to pass until individualism of effort is encouraged 
and personal energy rewarded. 

It is also true that if the Russian people should be 
converted into an industrial and economic organi- 
zation it would be necessary to gather them into 



286 SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 

towns and cities, to concentrate their labor, and 
to educate them. Nor more than three per cent 
of the moujiks, it is said — and correctly, I believe 
— can now read or write. There are newspapers 
printed in Moscow, but I never saw one sold on 
the streets, nor did I see anybody reading one, and 
the signs on the shops which appeal for the trade 
of the masses are largely pictorial. To make such 
a people economic and industrial, they must be edu- 
cated, organized, and quickened. When that is 
done, the docile peasant, with his depressed look, 
his quiet ways, and his simple faith in God and 
the Tsar, will have disappeared. His place will 
be taken by the active and energetic workingman, 
and the present S3^stem of autocracy will come to 
a speedy end. Whether this change can be wrought 
in the character of the Russian is doubtful, but 
if it can be effected it would take a long time, and 
no effort is now being made to bring it about. 
Perhaps those who control the destinies of Russia 
perceive that securing industrial success after the 
Western fashion requires a change in the character 
and training of the people which would involve 
a revolution in the forms of government; but 
whether they see it or not, they are making no 
effort to advance their people in that way. The 
great body of the Russians, consisting of the peasant 
and farmer classes, are fettered hand and foot by 



SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 287 

the communal land tenure and by the burden of 
payments, which they are forced to make for the 
lands which they formerly worked as serfs. This 
constitutes an absolutely insurmountable barrier at 
present to their advancement. They have, more- 
over, no outlet for their products, because there is 
no system of distribution sufficient to their needs, 
and there is no encouragement whatever to indi- 
vidual progress and personal effort. 

Russian statesmen are not blind to the perils of 
the existing situation ; and if they are not seeking to 
give opportunity to individualism, they are at least 
trying to secure, in their own socialistic way, indus- 
trial development for Russia. This is the controlling 
idea of M. Witte, the Minister of Finance, who is 
to-day the strongest man and the dominating force in 
the public life of Russia. He sees very plainly the 
vital necessity of industrial development, and he is 
trying to secure it through the Government. To 
Americans the effort, powerful and well directed as it 
is, seems painfully hopeless. The Government under- 
takes to run not only the railroads and the telegraphs, 
but it regulates sugar production and interferes 
directly with all the industrial activities of the 
country. The banks are urged to lend money for the 
assistance of industries. The industries expand be- 
yond their strength and fail. The banks are threat- 
ened with disaster, and fall back upon the Government. 



288 SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 

The Government sustains the banks and turns to 
western Europe and to America for loans. If the 
loans fail — and sooner or later borrowing for enter- 
prises which do not pay must come to an end — 
the machinery of business will stop. Such a system, 
no matter how energetically it is pressed, cannot sus- 
tain itself or hope to compete in the long run with 
the highly organized and thoroughly economical 
systems of other countries like France and Germany, 
or like England and the United States. 

With patience and tenacity of purpose, with courage 
and much governing capacit}^, Russia has gone on add- 
ing one great region after another to her possessions. 
She has shown two leading qualities of a ruling race 
in her ability to expand and govern ; but when the 
territory comes into her possession, no matter how 
rich it is, she either cannot develop it at all or at best 
only partially and unprofitably. Her own original 
territory is still undeveloped and unorganized, and 
what is true of European Russia is true also of her 
great Eastern possessions. It is useless, economically 
speaking, to acquire territory if nothing can be done 
to improve it ; if it cannot be made a benefit either to 
its own inhabitants or to the country which has taken 
possession of it. Every acre of land that Russia now 
adds is a weakness. Her undeveloped territory in- 
volves an immense burden of expense, and a great 
deal of it practically yields nothing. The point has 



SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 289 

been reached when the more she adds to her domain 
the essentially weaker she grows. There is but one 
remedy, and that is to develop the personal energy 
and industrial force of the people, if they possess these 
qualities. It will certainly be a slow process, but it 
is the only one which will succeed. Eussia cannot 
use her vast resources ; cannot survive under modern 
conditions in the long run by any of the devices of a 
military socialism. While she is as she is, the better 
organized nations have nothing to fear from her trade 
competition. She can bar them out from the vast 
regions under her sway, but she can wm no share of 
the world's trade, and she cannot apparently build up 
a domestic trade and industry of serious importance. 
She has an immense domain, she is potentially a 
great force of the future, but all this force will rust 
unused unless it can be grasped by the masses of the 
people, who must then adapt themselves to the 
modern conditions, under which survival is alone 
possible. 

The work of diplomacy and the ability to govern 
in which the statesmen of Russia have shown them- 
selves masters, a powerful army, judicious alliances, 
and a patient, obstinate adhesion to well-matured 
plans can do much, can make Russia, as they have 
made her, formidable to all her neighbors and a great 
power in Europe and Asia. But farther than this 
she cannot go, no position less precarious than that 



290 SOME IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA 

of to-day can she occupy, until the energies of her 
people are called out and given full play. If these 
energies, once set free to hope and strive, prove to be 
capable of high economic development, then she can 
look forward to winning a position as a world-power 
commensurate with her vast resources and perilous, 
indeed, to all her rivals. Unless all the teachings of 
history and science are vain, there is no other way. 



ROCHAMBEAU ' 

Statecraft has a cynical maxim that there is no 
such thing as gratitude between nations. If we must 
accept this as true of those practical dealings where 
sentiment comes into hopeless collision with self-inter- 
est, we may at least say that no nation really great will 
ever hesitate to make public acknowledgment of its 
obligations to others in the past. The New "World of 
North America has had a long and close connection 
with the people of France. At the very dawn of the 
sixteenth century Breton fishermen had followed in 
the track of the Cabots, and were plying their danger- 
ous trade off the coast of Newfoundland. Thirty 
years later Cartier was in the St. Lawrence laying 
the foundation of New France by the mighty river of 
the North. When the century had just passed its 
meridian, the Huguenots came to Florida, and the 
great name of Coligny links itself with our history as 
the inspirer of distant expeditions to the untrodden 
shores of America, even when France herself was 
torn with the wars of religion. It is a dark and 

1 Address delivered at the Unveiling of the Statue of the Comte 
de Rochambeau, "Washington, May 24, 1902. 



292 ROCHAMBEAU 

splendid story, wellnigh forgotten now, which comes 
up to us out of that dim past touched with the glory 
of the admiral of France. There in the old books we 
can read of Ribault and Laudonniere and their com- 
rades, of their daring and intelligence, and of the 
settlements they founded. Then come Menendez and 
his Spaniards, the surprise and slaughter of the 
French, massacred on account of their religion ; and 
then, a few years later, De Gourgues swoops down 
upon the Spanish forts, and the Spaniards in turn 
drench the sands with their blood and swing on gibbets 
to remind all men of the passing of the avenger. Thus 
driven from the South, the French still held their grip 
on the heritage of Cartier. Champlain gave his name 
to the great lake of New England, where rival nations 
were one day to fight for dominion. French mis- 
sionaries died for their faith among the red men of 
New York. Pere Marquette explored the "West, and 
the gallant La Salle bore the lilies of France from 
the source to the mouth of the Mississippi. The 
French names mark the passing of the French dis- 
coverers from Montreal to St. Louis and from St. 
Louis to New Orleans. And while the " Roi Soleil " 
was raising his frowning fortress on the banks of the 
St. Lawrence, despatching Auvergnats and Normans 
and Bretons to settle Canada and urging his explor- 
ers across the continent, some others of his best sub- 
jects, driven forth into the world by revoked edicts 



ROCHAMBEAU 293 

and certain things called dragonnades, were bringing 
their wit and quick intelligence to strengthen and 
upbuild the English colonies, which were growing up 
not at all in the orderly way dear to the heart of a 
grand monarch, but in a rude, vigorous, scrambling, 
independent fashion, after the manner of races who 
found nations and establish states. 

Presently it appeared that there was not room 
enough even in the vast wildernesses of North 
America for the rival powers of France and England. 
A few shots fired by sundry Virginians under the 
command of George Washington, whose name, spring- 
ing forth suddenly from the backwoods, was then first 
heard in two continents, began a stubborn war, which 
ended only with the fall of the French power and 
the triumph of England and the English colonies. 
Thus was a new situation created in North America. 
Instead of two rival powers struggling for mastery, 
one reigned supreme from the St. Lawrence to Florida. 
The danger from the North, dark with Indian war- 
fare, which had so long threatened the Atlantic 
colonies, had passed away. The need of the strong 
support of the mother country against the power of 
France had gone, and the position of the colonies in their 
relations with England was enormously strengthened. 
A blundering ministry, a few meddlesome and oppres- 
sive acts on the part of Parliament, a departure from 
Walpole's wise maxim about America, " Quieta non 



294 ROCHAMBEAU 

movere," and mischief would be afoot. It all came 
sooner than any one dreamed. The rejoicings at the 
close of the victorious war had hardly ended, the 
congratulations to the "Great Commoner" had 
hardly ceased, the statue of George III. was scarcely 
firm on its pedestal, when the Americans rose in 
wrath against the Stamp Act. England gave way 
sufficiently to make the colonies realize their power, 
and yet not so completely as to extinguish suspicion 
and hostility. There was a lull, a period of smiling, 
deceptive calm, then the storm broke again, and this 
time there was not wisdom enough left in London to 
allay it. The little minds which Burke thought so 
ill suited to a great empire were in full control, and 
the empire began in consequence to show an ominous 
and ever-widening rent. 

Again France appears upon the continent where for 
so many years she had played such a great part, and 
had fought so bravely and so unavailingly for domin- 
ion. The chance had come to wreak an amj^le ven- 
geance upon the power which had driven her from 
Canada. France would have been more or less than 
human if she had not grasped the opportunity at 
once so satisfying to wounded pride and so promising 
politically. Covertly at first she aided the English 
colonies, and then after the surrender of Burgoyne at 
Saratoga, the treaty of alliance was signed, and 
France entered into the war with Great Britain. 



ROCHAMBEAU 295 

The French government aided us with money and 
with men, by land and by sea, but the decisive force 
was that which landed at Newport in the long July 
days of 1780. 

To that brave, well-officered, highly disciplined 
army we raise a monument to-day, by placing here 
in the nation's capital the statue of its commander. 
For their service and for his own we owe him a debt 
of gratitude, for which we would here make lasting 
acknowledgment, one which will stand unchanged 
beneath the sunshine and the rain long after the 
words we speak shall have been forgotten. 

This statue is the counterfeit presentment of the 
gallant figure of a gallant gentleman. Born in 1725, 
of noble family, a native of Vendome, Jean Baptiste 
Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau, had 
just passed his fifty-fifth birthday when he landed 
at Newport. His career had been long and dis- 
tinguished. His honors and his rank in the army 
had been won in the field, not in the antechambers 
of Versailles. In an age when the greatest noble- 
men of France thought it no shame to seek advance- 
ment from royal mistresses by whose whims ministers 
rose and fell and the policies of state were decided, 
Rochambeau in time of peace turned from the court 
to his regiment and his estates. He had shared in 
all the campaigns of France from the time when his 
elder brother's death had taken him from the church, 



296 ROCHAMBEAU 

in which he was about to become a priest, and placed 
him in the army. At the siege of Namur he earned 
the rank of colonel by the surprise of an outpost 
which led to the surrender of the town. He was 
twice wounded at the head of his regiment at the 
battle of Laufeld. He captured the enemy's maga- 
zines at the siege of Maestricht, and won the Cross 
of St. Louis leading the assault upon the forts of 
Minorca. He fought the Prince Ferdinand of Bruns- 
wick, and captured the fortress of Regenstein in 
1757. At Crefeld he sustained for a long time the 
attack of the Prussian army ; he took a leading part 
in the battle of Minden, and was again wounded at 
Kloster camp. After the peace Rochambeau was 
often consulted by ministers, but never would take 
office. At last, in March, 1780, he was made lieu- 
tenant-general and sent with the French army to 
America. 

He reached the United States at a dark hour for 
the American cause. The first fervor of resistance 
had cooled, the active fighting had subsided in the 
North, Congress had grown feeble and inert, govern- 
ment and finance both dragged heavily, and it 
seemed as if the Revolution, so successful in the 
field, would founder upon the rocks of political and 
executive incapacity. Washington and the army, 
in the midst of almost imparalleled difiiculties, alone 
kept the cause alive. The coming of Rochambeau 



ROCHAMBEAU 297 

and his men was a great good fortune, and yet 
its first result was to induce further relaxation of 
effort on the part of Congress. Washington, realiz- 
ing all the event meant, opened correspondence at 
once with Rochambeau, but it was not until Septem- 
ber that he was able to seek the French commander 
in person at Hartford. It was a great relief to 
the heavily burdened general to meet such a man 
as Rochambeau, and yet even then, as he turned 
back with lightened heart and lifted hopes, the news 
of Arnold's treason smote him on his arrival at 
West Point. 

So the summer had gone and nothing had been 
done. Then Rochambeau was unwilling to move 
without further reinforcements, and Washington 
was struggling desperately to wring from a hesitat- 
ing Congress and from reluctant States the men, 
money, and supplies absolutely essential if the great 
opportunity which had now come was not to pass 
away unused. So the winter wore on and spring 
came, and in May Washington and Rochambeau 
were again in consultation. Washington was de- 
termined to strike a fatal blow somewhere. He 
considered Florida and the scheme of taking the 
British under Rawdon in the rear; he thought of 
Virginia, where Cornwallis, forced northward by 
Green's stratagem, was established with his army; 
long and earnestly he looked at New York, the chief 



298 R0CHA3IBEAU 

seat of British power. Rochambeau showed his mili- 
tary intelligence by leaning strongly to Virginia. 
But the one vital condition was still lacking : Wash- 
ington knew that he must command the sea, if only 
for a month, at the point where he was to deliver 
the decisive blow. So the days slipped by, the 
summer waned, and then of a sudden the great 
condition sprang into life. De Grasse, to whom we 
owe a debt as great as to Rochambeau, appeared 
in the Chesapeake with his fleet. No longer was 
there room for doubt. Cornwallis in Virginia was 
clearly now the quarry for the allied forces. 

Time forbids me to tell the brilliant story of that 
campaign; of the manner in which De Barras was 
induced to bring his squadron from the north; of 
the adroitness with which Clinton was deceived in 
New York; of the skill and rapidity with which 
the French and American armies were hurried from 
New York to the Chesapeake, and thence to York- 
town. The great, the golden moment so longed for 
by Washington, when he could unite both land and 
sea power, had at last arrived. De Grasse was 
master of the bay. The English fleet was scattered 
and divided. CHnton slumbered in New York, and 
Cornwallis, with some 9,000 men, was in Yorktown, 
with the united French and American armies drawn 
close about him. Fast followed the siege, nearer 
came the enclosing lines ; Lauzun dashed back Tarle- 



ROCHAMBEAU 299 

ton's cavalry at the very beginning, and every British 
sortie from that moment was repulsed. Day by day 
the parallels were pushed forward, and at last Wash- 
ington declared the advanced British redoubts prac- 
ticable for assault. The French, under Viomenil, 
the Grenadiers of Gatinois, the regiments of Au- 
vergne and Deux-Ponts stormed one, and here the 
most famous of the French regiments recovered from 
their king the proud motto of "Auvergne sans 
tache." The other redoubt was assigned to the 
Americans under Lafayette, led by Alexander Hamil- 
ton and John Laurens, Both assaults, brilliantly 
delivered, were successful, and the American lines 
included the ground which had been so gallantly 
won. A desperate sortie under Colonel Graham com- 
pletely repulsed, a vain attempt to escape by water, 
and then all was over. On the 18th of October 
Cornwallis surrendered, and on the following day 
the British filed out and laid down their arms, 
passing between the ordered lines of the French 
drawn up under the lilies and the ranks of the 
Americans standing beneath the thirteen stars fixed 
on that day in the firmanent of nations. The 
American Revolution had been fought out and the 
new people had won. 

Through all these events, through all the months 
of weary waiting, through the weeks of rapid march 
and the hurrying days of siege and battle, there shine 



300 ROCHAMBEAU 

out very brightly the fine qualities of the French gen- 
eral. Nothing is more difficult than the management 
in war of allied forces. Here there was never a jar. 
Rochambeau was large-minded enough to understand 
the greatness of Washington, to realize the height of 
mind and the power of character which invested the 
American leader with a dignity beyond aught that 
royal birth or kingly title could confer. No small 
jealousies marred their intercourse. They wrought 
together for a common cause; and the long experi- 
ence, the thorough training, the keen military intelli- 
gence, the wisdom and honest purpose of Rochambeau 
were all freely given to the Americans and their com- 
mander. Honor and gratitude, then, to Rochambeau 
for what he did for us, and gratitude and honor like- 
wise to De Grasse and De Barras for the sea power 
with which they upheld and sustained both Washing- 
ton and Rochambeau. 

But there is something more in the story than this ; 
something of deeper meaning than the plans of states- 
men to humble a successful foe and take a tardy re- 
venge for past defeats ; something more profound 
than the grasping of a young people at a friendly 
hand to draw them forth from the stormy waters of a 
desperate war for liberty. Look again on those men 
gathered under the white flag in the mellow October 
sunlight. The pride of victory is in their hearts, for 
they have done well for France; they have cruelly 



ROCHAMBEAU 301 

avenged the loss of Canada. The world smiles upon 
them as the British pass by and pile their arms. 
Happily for them they cannot read the future. They 
do not even grasp the meaning of the war they have 
helped to bring to an end. They cannot interpret 

" Time's dark events 
Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky." 

But their future is our past, and we know their 
destinies. There is Rochambeau himself, chief figure 
among the French. He will go home to added honors; 
he will take part presently in the movement for re- 
form, and will receive from a new government a 
marshal's baton. Then a torrent of blood flows. 
Others of his rank will fly across the frontier, but he 
is made of sterner stuff. He will retire to his estates, 
be dragged to prison, will be barely saved from the 
guillotine by the Ninth Thermidor, and will live on 
to receive the compliments of the greatest soldier of 
modern times, and will die full of years and honors. 
There is Lafayette. For him an Austrian prison is 
waiting. There is Viomenil, who commanded the 
force which took the redoubt. He will die in hiding, 
wounded in defence of his king's palace against the 
onset of a maddened people on the 10th of August. 
There is Damas, wounded at the Yorktown redoubt. 
In a few years he will be a fugitive and an exile 
fighting against France. There is Lameth, wounded 



302 ROCHAMBEAU 

also at the redoubt. For him, too, the future holds a 
prison and a long exile. There is Lauzun, type of 
the ancien regime, the victor over Tarleton's horse, 
the bearer of the brave news to Versailles ; he, too, 
will stay by France, and his end will be the guillo- 
tine. The prophet who should have foretold such 
fates as these for that gallant company would have 
been laughed to scorn. From no men did disaster 
seem more distant than from those brave gentlemen 
of France on that October morning, and yet the 
future held for them exile, prison, and the guillotine. 
And it was all inevitable, for the American Revolution 
not only made a new nation, but it was the beginning 
of a world-wide movement, at once mighty and re- 
lentless. There was something stronger than gov- 
ernment or ministers, than kings or politics, which 
brought the French to America. 

Across the square stands the statue of Lafayette. 
He brought to America no army like Rochambeau, no 
fleet like De Grasse. He came by no command of 
his king. Yet has he always been nearer to the 
hearts of the Americans than any man not of their 
own people. The reason is not far to seek. He 
came of his own accord, and brought with him 
the sympathy of France. He represented the new 
spirit of a new time, the aspirations, the hopes, the 
visions which had come out of the intellectual revolu- 
tion wrought by Voltaire, Rousseau, and the Encyclo- 



ROCHAMBEAU 303 

p^distes. Purposes of state, calculations of chances, 
selfish desires might guide the French Government, 
but Lafayette was the living embodiment of the sym- 
pathy of the French people for the cause of the 
United States. He came because he loved that cause 
and had faith in it, and so the American people gave 
faith and love to him. And this impalpable spirit of 
the time, stirring strongly but blindly in France, was 
even then more powerful than monarchs or cabinets 
or coalitions. In America it passed for the first time 
from the world of speculation to the world of action. 
There in the new country, on the edge of the yet 
unconquered continent, theory became practice and 
doctrines lived as facts. There a people had risen up 
declaring that they were weary of kings, had fought 
their own battle for their own hand, and won. The 
democratic movement had begun. 

From America it passed across the sea, saying to 
all men that what had been done in the new land 
could be done likewise in the old. The army of 
Rochambeau, flushed with victory, bore back the 
message with them, and it fell upon listening 
ears. France had helped us to liberty and inde- 
pendence, and we had shown her how both were 
won. The force which we had summoned they, too, 
evoked, and banded Europe, blind to the deeper 
meanings of the American war, went to pieces in dull 
surprise before the onset of a people armed, the 



304 ROCHAMBEAU 

makers of a revolution in which thrones tottered, 
privilege and feudalism went down to ruin, and the 
ancient boundaries of kings faded from the map. 
The lilies which had floated so triumphantly in the 
Virginian air gave way to the American colors, 
which French armies carried in triumph from Paris 
to Moscow, and from the Baltic to the Nile, wiping 
out forever the petty tyrannies which sold men to 
fight in quarrels not their own, and clearing the 
ground for the larger liberty and the united nations 
of to-day. The United States, with independer.ee 
achieved, passed out of the network of European 
politics, in which for a century and a half the 
American colonies had been entangled, but the in- 
fluence and example of the American revolution were 
felt throughout the civilization of the West. 

We unveil this statue in honor of a brave soldier 
who fought by the side of Washington. We place it 
here to keep his memory fresh in remembrance and 
as a monument of our gratitude to France. But let 
us not forget that we also commemorate here the men 
who first led in arms the democratic movement 
which during a century of conflict has advanced the 
cause of freedom and popular government throughout 
the world of Western civilization. 



APPENDIX 

LETTER FROM HON. GEORGE F. HOAR 

In regard to Mr. Sherman and Mr. Ellsworth and the share of 
each in securing the " Connecticut Compromise " 

Isles of Shoals, July 28, 1902. 

My dear Colleague, — I suppose as a writer and student 
of American History, dwelling in Boston, you have often been 
bothered by the claims of your contemporaries in oehalf of 
their grandfathers. On the other hand, as a Bostonian with 
an illustrious great-grandfather of your own, you must have 
learned to sympathize with the feeling. 

So I make no apology for calling your attention to the 
question whether Mr. Ellsworth can be justly credited with 
having designed the existing distribution of political power 
between the States and the Nation in National Legislation, 
or of having caused the adoption of the same by his efforts in 
the Convention that framed the Constitution, or whether, on 
the other hand, Mr. Sherman is not justly entitled to that 
credit. 

The question is not of very great importance to the fame 
of either. Each of them rendered enough distinguished 
public service to bear the subtraction of that from his credit 
without any serious impairment of his fame. That is espe- 
cially true of Oliver Ellsworth, who gained so great a distinc- 
tion in diplomacy, in jurisprudence, in legislation, and as a 
builder of the Constitution. 



306 APPENDIX 

I heard your address at New Haven. The subject was 
very dear to me indeed. I have always felt toward Oliver 
Ellsworth as you might feel toward a very dear uncle, or, 
except for the difference in time, as toward an elder brother. 
He was my grandfather's dearest and closest friend. My 
mother was constantly in his household, and his daughter 
was my mother's dearest friend in her youth, and his chil- 
dren were her playmates. So I heard stories about the Ells- 
worths, or to use my mother's phrase, what " Judge Ellsworth 
used to say," as you heard stories doubtless from your parents 
of your grandparents. Ellsworth's great service has been too 
much neglected by historians. Save the excellent, but of 
course brief, tribute to him by Mr. Bancroft, there has been 
no adequate tribute to him until yours. 

But I think you will agree that the chief credit of the 
Connecticut Compromise, as it has been called, does not 
belong to him. 

I have drawn off from the Madison papers everything 
which was said or done by either of them in regard to the 
subject. Of all this I send you a copy. The dates are 
given. The pages referred to are those of the edition just 
published by Congress, in what is called the " Documentary 
History of the Constitution of the United States," which I 
have no doubt you have at hand. 

What Mr. Ellsworth said and did in the matter is this. 
June 11th, he seconded Roger Sherman's motion. This 
motion was that the proportion of suffrage in the first branch 
should be according to numbers, and that in the second 
branch each State should have one vote and no more. That 
motion was, after debate, lost. June 29th, Mr. Ellsworth 
moved that the rule of suffrage in the second branch be the 
same with that established by the Articles of Confederation. 
He made an able speech, briefly reported, in which he said 



APPENDIX 307 

that he hoped that this would become a ground of com- 
promise in regard to the second branch, and that Massa- 
chusetts was the only State to the eastward that would 
agree to a plan which did not contain this provision. That 
motion also was lost. June 30th, he made another able 
speech in favor of that proposition. June 25 th, he made 
another able speech on the same subject. 

July 2nd, he was elected to the Committee on Eepresenta- 
tion in the Senate. He did not serve on the Committee, but 
was replaced by Mr. Sherman. July 5th, he said he was 
ready to accede to the compromise they had reported. 
July 14th, he asked two very searching and pregnant ques- 
tions of Mr. Wilson and Mr. Madison, the answers to which 
tended to destroy the force of Mr. Wilson's argument against 
the compromise. August 8th, Mr. Ellsworth did not think 
the clause as to originating money bills of any consequence, 
but as it was thought of consequence by some of the mem- 
bers from the larger States, he was willing that it should 
stand. 

So, to sum up Mr. Ellsworth's work in the matter, he made 
a motion, which was lost, covering a part of the plan. He 
seconded Mr. Sherman's original motion, which was lost. 
He made another motion substantially to the same effect, 
which was lost, and made three strong speeches and put two 
pertinent questions on the side of the measure. He was put 
on the Grand Committee, but did not serve, but afterwards 
expressed his acquiescence in the report, and was obliged to 
leave the Convention before it adjourned without signing 
the Constitution. 

Now, on the other hand, see what Mr. Sherman had to do 
with it, both as to conceiving the plan, and as to promoting 
its adoption by the Convention after it had been twice 
rejected. First, you find in John Adams' diary that this 



308 APPENDIX 

same question occasioned a very earnest struggle in the Con- 
tinental Congress. I have not the references at hand, but 
you will easily find them by looking at the index of John 
Adams' works.^ John Adams says that in 1776, Mr. Sherman 
being on the Committee to frame the Articles of Confed- 
eration, Mr. Sherman wanted to have the question taken 
both ways, the States first to vote according to numbers 
and again on the principle of equality, and that no vote 
should be deemed to be carried unless it had a majority vote 
both ways. 

This is in substance what Mr, Sherman moved first in the 
Constitutional Convention. 

That this was a subject of great discussion and contro- 
versy in the Congress, and considered of the most vital im- 
portance, is clear, not only from the character of the question, 
but from Dr. Franklin's statement made in the Constitutional 
Convention as to what happened in the Continental Congress 
in 1774. Mr. Sherman was a member of that Congress, as 
he was of the Congress in 1776. Mr. Ellsworth was not a 
member of the Continental Congress in either of those years. 

So Mr. Sherman had been through one great contest on 
this same question, and had himself devised the solution 
which was finally in substance adopted in the Constitution. 

Next, Mr. Sherman made the first motion for the adoption 
of this principle in the Convention, June 11th. The relation 
of that motion to the old controversy in the Continental 
Congress appears clearly from the fact that Dr. Franklin's 
statement on that subject was made to the Convention the 
same day. 

Also on the same day, Mr. Sherman, having made his 
original proposition, moved that the question be taken upon 
it and declared that everything depended upon that. He 

1 Works of John Adams, vol. ii. pp. 365 ff., 496-501. 



APPENDIX 309 

declared that the smaller States would never agree to the 
plan on any other principle than an equality of suffrage in 
this branch. 

This, as appears above, was June 11th, Mr. Ellsworth 
took no part in the matter, except seconding Mr. Sherman's 
motion, until June 29th. June 20th, Mr. Sherman made a 
long and strong speech in favor of the plan. June 28th also, 
Mr. Sherman made another earnest speech in favor of the 
plan. So he had not only devised the scheme, but moved it 
in the Convention, and made three speeches in its favor 
before Mr. Ellsworth was heard from. Next, when on July 
2nd General Pinckney moved the Grand Committee to devise 
and report a compromise, Mr. Sherman spoke in favor of the 
motion. He said, " We are now at a full stop, and nobody 
he supposed meant that we should break up without doing 
something." Mr. Ellsworth took no part in that. 

July 2nd, Mr. Ellsworth was elected on the Committee. 
But he went off the Committee alleging indisposition, and 
Mr. Sherman went on. The indisposition could not have 
been very serious because Mr. Ellsworth is found taking 
part in the proceedings of the Convention, I think, without 
intermission. He was present in the Convention, and spoke 
July 5th, the first day of their meeting after the Committee 
was appointed. So it seems not unlikely that his indisposi- 
tion was not only not very serious, but that he went off the 
Committee in order that Mr. Sherman, who had shown such 
great interest in the matter, should take his place. But this 
of course is mere conjecture and is not entitled to much 
weight. 

Mr. Sherman then appears as moving in the Committee a 
further limitation on the power of the Senate, namely, that 
while the House was to vote according to numbers, no 
measure should pass the Senate unless there was a majority 



310 APPENDIX 

in the Senate as representing population, and also a majority 
as representing the States in its favor. Mr. Madison says 
that that was not much deliberated upon or approved. It 
does not affect the point we are dealing with one way or the 
other. But it seems to me likely that Mr. Madison, who did 
not himself attend the meeting of the Committee, probablj" 
got his information from somebody who misapprehended the 
point, because it does not seem likely that that proposition 
would have been made. If Mr. Sherman made any motion 
at all of the sort, I should conjecture that it was one which was 
expected to take effect only in case the old plan of a single 
branch, or of amending the Articles of Confederation, which 
both he and Ellsworth as well as Patterson and some others 
had favored, were adopted. But this is all idle conjecture. 

After the Committee had been appointed Mr. Sherman, on 
the 7th of July, makes a speech at some length in favor of the 
plan. Mr. Ellsworth did nothing further, except his speech 
and questions on July 14th. On July 14th, Mr. Eutledge 
moved to reconsider the two propositions touching the origi- 
nating of money bills in the first and equality of votes in the 
second branch. Mr. Sherman replied to him and objected, 
but the objections seemed to have been waived, and Mr. 
Sherman made another speech, so that he spoke twice on 
that day. September 5 th, Gouverneur Morris moved to post- 
pone the clause concerning money bills which formed part of 
the Compromise. Mr. Sherman replied to him that he was 
for giving immediate ease to those who look on this clause as 
of great moment, and for trusting to their concurrence in 
other proper measm^es. 

Now it seems to me, from the foregoing summary, that Mr. 
Sherman, besides having devised and proposed the measure, 
and having made more speeches than any other person in its 
favor, may be fairly considered to have been the member who 



APPENDIX 311 

had the measure in charge. He undertakes to speak for the 
smaller States, and whenever any question of postponing or 
proceeding to consider or reconsider is made he arises to 
represent his side. Not only that, but when Mr. Morris tries 
to get rid of the clause about Money Bills which had been 
deshed by the larger States, and also was advocated later by 
General Washington in the only speech he made as to any 
provision of the Constitution as being of great importance, 
Mr. Sherman insisted that that should be disposed of, and 
that those who favored it should be trusted to concur in other 
proper measures ; but finally, and what seems to me a clincher, 
on the 15 th of September, when the provision as to amending 
the Constitution was up, Mr. Sherman moved what nobody 
of the small States seems to have thought of before, to 
annex to the end of the articles a further proviso, that no 
State shall, without its consent, be affected in its internal 
police, or be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate. 
That was lost. Mr. Sherman then instantly moved to strike 
out the provision authorizing amendments to the Constitution 
altogether. That was lost. But there were such murmurs 
of discontent among the representatives of the small States 
that the majority yielded, and Morris, who had himself 
strenuously resisted the whole arrangement, moved to annex 
the further proviso that no state, without its consent, shall 
be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate. This was 
unanimously agreed to. This motion of Gouverneur Morris 
was only a repetition of Mr. Sherman's motion without the 
provision as to internal police. This was the last day of the 
Convention, and no further action was taken except the signa- 
ture of the members. 

So it seems to me clear that the plan was Mr. Sherman's, 
that the proposal of it in the Convention was Mr. Sher- 
man's, that the first motion in its favor was Mr. Sherman's, 



312 APPENDIX 

and that the final proposition which made it safe in the 
clause about amending the Constitution was Mr. Sherman's ; 
and that he was on the Committee that reported it, and that 
he made more speeches in its favor than anybody else, and 
seems to have had the entire management or conduct of the 
measure. 

On the other hand, Mr. Ellsworth's contribution was sec- 
onding Mr. Sherman's first motion, making a similar motion 
himself, which was lost, and three or four powerful speeches 
in its favor. 

Now I know very well that there are many cases where 
one man will move a measure, will propose and devise a 
measure, and will even have charge of a measure in a legis- 
lative body when the success of the measure is due to 
the powerful influence of another. I suppose if some 
resolution declaring the doctrine of Webster's reply to Hayne 
had been moved by Mr. Foote or somebody else, and had 
been adopted by the Senate, that Webster would have been 
the man to whom the secm-ing of the adoption would be 
due. I suppose that the success of Hamilton's financial 
policy is due to him, and not to the men who introduced or 
supported it, in either House of Congress. 

You and I have seen many examples like the first in our 
own experience. I have prided myself a good deal on the 
provision for succession to the Executive power which was 
substituted for the old, clumsy arrangement, but I should 
have been in very great danger of losing it by the adoption of 
an amendment which would have spoiled it, by requiring a 
Presidential election to be had at once in the case that the 
bill provided for, but for Mr. Evarts coming to my help in a 
powerful speech which convinced and carried the Senate. 

But I do not think that can be said as to the comparative 
influence of Mr. Sherman and Mr. Ellsworth, great as was 
the power of the latter. 



APPENDIX 313 

Mr. Sherman, if he were remarkable for anything, was re- 
markable for his great tenacity in insisting on plans he had 
once devised, his great success in attaining his objects, and 
his great influence over the bodies to which he belonged, 
especially his great influence over the minds of the ablest 
men. I think he may be fairly compared to Alexander 
Hamilton in that particular. That this is true is proved by 
abundant testimonials from his great contemporaries, I do 
not think such testimonials are in existence in regard to 
another of them save Washington alone, with a possible ex- 
ception of Dr. Franklin. I cite a few of them from memory. 
Theodore Sedgwick, who served with Mr. Sherman in Wash- 
ington's first administration, said : " He was the man of the 
selectest wisdom he ever knew. His influence was such, in 
the bodies to which he belonged, that he never failed to carry 
every measure and every part of a measure which he advo- 
cated." I do not think the record will support this state- 
ment of Theodore Sedgwick's to its full extent, but it will 
support it almost to its full extent. 

Fisher Ames said " that if he happened to be out of his 
seat when a subject was discussed, and came in when the 
question was about to be taken, he always felt safe in voting 
as Mr. Sherman did, for he always voted right." Patrick 
Henry said that the first men in the Continental Congress 
were Washington, Eichard Henry Lee, and Koger Sherman. 
He said at another time that Eoger Sherman and George 
Mason were the greatest statesmen he ever knew. This 
statement appears in Howe's " Historical Collections of Vir- 
ginia," in the Life of George Mason, and in the Life of 
Patrick Henry. I took pains to verify it by writing to 
William Wirt Henry, Patrick Henry's grandson. I have his 
letter in my possession in which he declares that there is no 
doubt about it. He has frequently heard his mother, who 



314 APPENDIX 

was Patrick Henry's daughter-in-law, and in whose house- 
hold Patrick Henry lived in his old age, state the fact, and 
especially he got from his mother an account of Howe's visit 
to his father and mother, not long after Patrick Henry's 
death, when Mr. Howe received the statement from Patrick 
Henry's son and his wife, William Wut Henry's parents. 

John Adams said of him that " he was one of the soundest 
and strongest pillars of the Kevolution," and that he never 
knew two men more alike than Sherman and Ellsworth, 
except that the Chief Justice had the advantage of a liberal 
education. General Scott, who, with all his foibles, was a 
very great master of constitutional principles, said that he 
thought Roger Sherman was entitled to be considered as 
the fourth man in the transactions embracing the whole 
Revolutionary period and the formation of the new govern- 
ment. John Adams spoke of him on another occasion, in a 
letter to his wife, "as firm in the cause of American Inde- 
pendence as Mt. Atlas." Mr. Jefferson pointed him out to 
Dr. Spring, and said, " That is Mr. Sherman of Connecticut, a 
man who never said a foolish thing in his life." 

I hope you will not think that I quote these things from the 
vanity of a near relative, but it seems important to this par- 
ticular question to see whether, after all, whatever might have 
been Mr. Sherman's original relation to the matter, Mr. Ells- 
worth's superior strength and influence may not entitle him 
to the credit of its accomplishment. However, I do not 
think I need to cite much stronger evidence on this point 
than that of Judge Ellsworth himself, who paid to Mr. Sher- 
man the high tribute you cite in your address, — a tribute 
which was never paid by any public man to another on any 
other occasion that I know, — that he had formed his own 
character on Mr. Sherman's model. It may possibly be 
worth while to add to what I have said, that Mr. Sherman 



APPENDIX 315 

never during his long life failed of re-election to any pub- 
lic office that he held, except in the case of the Connecticut 
legislatme in the early days, where the priuciple of rotation 
in office was firmly established. When after the Eevolu- 
tionary War there was danger that a Tory would be elected 
the first Mayor of New Haven, Mr. Sherman, though then 
absent, I think, at the Constitutional Convention, was chosen 
Mayor. Thereupon the legislature passed a law that the 
office of Mayor should be held at the pleasure of the legis- 
lature. That resulted, as it was intended, in a life tenure of 
office for Mr. Sherman. He held the office of Mayor until 
he died, although during the same period he served as Eepre- 
sentative in Congress and as Senator. 

So, while Mr. Ellsworth's great character and ability as 
shown by his other public employments is unquestioned, it 
can hardly be claimed that he should have the credit of a 
measure, otherwise apparently due to Mr. Sherman, by reason 
that his strength was needed to its success. 

I hope that I have not wearied you by this discussion, or 
trespassed too much on your good nature. But I think you 
will like to be sure, in publishing what I am confident is to 
be a historical paper of very great and permanent value, to 
get right in every detail. I am, with highest regard. 
Faithfully yours, 

Geokge F. Hoar. 

KB. In summing up Ellsworth's and Sherman's con- 
tributions to this debate in this letter, I only included 
speeches that bear on the point of the Compromise, namely, 
the voting according to the principle of equality in one 
branch and according to numbers in the other, and giving to 
the House the exclusive power to originate money bills. 
There are several speeches by Ellsworth, as there are by 



316 APPENDIX 

Patterson of New Jersey, in favor of the equality of the 
States, and in favor of engrafting the new provision and the 
old confederation. That also was the idea of Mr. Sherman 
before the Convention met. There is now in existence in his 
handwriting, in the possession of my cousin at New Haven, 
the papers which he took with him to the Convention, pro- 
posing his scheme of a Constitution. That is copied in 
Boutell's Life of Koger Sherman. I have in my possession 
a copy of the Constitution wholly in his handwriting, as it 
appeared shortly after the report of the Grand Committee. 
It was altered considerably after that time. 



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